In the circumstances, there was nothing that she could well say against this. She nodded. The Inger consulted his timetable, found a train toward morning, and the thing was done. He left the place like a boy. “Let’s see some of this Mouth o’ the Pit this afternoon,” he said, “being we’re here. And then we’ll head for that war meeting. It’s grand we got here for it,” he added. Lory looked up at him in a kind of fear. On the mountain that night she had not once really feared him. But here, she now understood, was a man with whom, in their days together, she had after all never yet come face to face. VI THEY sat where they could see the great audience gather. The people came by thousands. They poured in the aisles, advanced, separated, sifted into the rows of seats, climbed to the boxes, the galleries, ranged along those sloping floors like puppets. The stage filled. There were men and women, young, old, clothed in a mass of black shot through with color. Here were more people than ever in their lives Lory or the Inger had seen. The stage alone was a vast audience hall. The people talked. A dull roar came from them, fed by voices, by shuffling feet, by the moving of garments and papers and bodies. They all moved. No one was still. The human mass, spread so thinly in the hollow shell of the hall, moved like maggots. The Inger leaned forward, watching. His eyes were lit and his breath quickened. His huge frame obscured the outlook of a little white-faced youth who sat beside him, continually stroking and twisting at a high and small moustache. “Sit back, sir, can’t you?” this exasperated youth finally demanded. The Inger, his hand spread massively as he leaned on his leg, tossed him a glance, over shoulder, and with lifted brows. “Why, you little lizard,” he observed, only, and did not change his posture. A group of men and women in evening clothes sat beside Lory, who frankly stared at them. One of the women, elderly, pallidly powdered, delicately worn down by long, scrupulous care of her person, sat with one blue and boned hand in evidence, heavily clad with rings. “Look at the white bird’s claw,” the Inger said suddenly. “I’d like to snap it off its bloomin’ stem.” And as the people ceased to come in, and now were merely sitting there, breathing, and incredibly alive, he suddenly spoke aloud: “If hundreds of ’em fell dead and was dragged out,” he said, “we’d never know the difference, would we?” Lory’s look was the speculative look which always embarrassed him. “If two of ’em was us, we would,” she said. The Inger laughed boisterously. “You bet,—then!” he agreed. “Lord, ain’t it grand that the rest of ’em could go, for all we care!” She pondered it. “What if they was a big fire,” she said, “like the Hess House?” The Hess House, an unsavory place of Inch, had burned the year before, and with it five nameless women.