"He's not ten feet from the platform in the centre aisle--front row--clean shaven--a young giant of twenty-three--the handsomest man in the house. Put your soul _and_ your body in every word you utter, every breath you breathe--and _win_ him!" "I'll try," was the low reply. CHAPTER II A NEW JOAN OF ARC The woman in scarlet rose, lifted her hand, and the crowd sprang to their feet to the music of the most stirring song of revolution ever written. Norman and Elena were both swept from their seats in spite of themselves. Elena's eyes flashed with excitement. "What on earth is that they are singing, Norman?" she whispered. "The Marseillaise hymn." "Isn't it thrilling?" she gasped. "It makes your heart leap, doesn't it?" "And, heavens, how they sing it!" she exclaimed. Norman turned and looked over the crowd of eager faces--every man and woman singing with the passionate enthusiasm of religious fanatics--an enthusiasm electric, contagious, overwhelming. In spite of himself he felt his heart beat with quickened sympathy. He was amazed at the character of the audience. He had expected to see a throng of low-browed brutes. The first shock he received was the feeling that this crowd was distinctly an intellectual one. They might be fanatics. They certainly were not fools. The stamp of personality was clean cut on almost every face. They were fighters. They meant business and they didn't care who knew it. Some of them wore dirty clothes, but their faces were stamped with the power of free, rebellious thought--a power that always commands respect in spite of shabby clothes. He looked in vain for a single joyous face. Not a smile. Deep, dark eyes, shining with the light of purpose, mouths firm, headstrong, merciless, and bitter, but nowhere the glimmer of a ray of sunlight! He felt with a sense of awe the uncanny presence of Tragedy. And to his amazement he noticed a lot of men he knew in the crowd--three or four authors, a newspaper reporter evidently off duty, two college professors, a clergyman, three artists, a priest, and a street preacher. The hymn died away into a low sigh, like the sob of the wind after a storm. The crowd sank to their seats so quietly with the dying of the music that Norman and Elena were standing alone for an instant. They awoke from the spell, and dropped into their seats with evident embarrassment.