“Perhaps what I think of you,” he said, stirring to thrill her some way if possible, “is really a fiery thing, Bessie. I think of you singing great hordes of creatures into unity of idea that would lift them from beasts into men. The world is so full of sorrow and dulness of seeing; the world is in a cloud--I want you to sing the clouds away. If you could wait--just wait, as one holding a sure and perfect gift--until the real call comes to you, and then sing, knowing your part, not in pleasure and amusement, but in life, in the stirring centres of struggle and strife. If you would go forth singing that great song of yours--from your soul! It would be like a voice from the East--to bring the tatters of humanity together. I felt all this vaguely when I first heard you--six months ago. I have thought of it nights and days on the ocean--in times when we had to live on our thoughts, hold fast to them or go mad, for we had two days’ water for ten, and two days’ food for ten. Then I remembered how I came into Brandt’s, torn that night, not knowing what to do--dull-eyed and covered with wrongs. You sang me free. For the minute you sang me out of all that. I could not have freed myself perhaps--without that song. I know that there are thousands of men like me to be freed----” Bellair felt on sure ground now. This was his particular manner and message--the finest and strangest thing about him--the fact that had always appeared, making him different even from Fleury and the woman,--the thought that he was average--and not more impressionable than the multitudes. If they could be reached, they would make the big turn that he had been shoved into. “... Thousands just as I was that night, preyed upon by trade, dull-witted with the ways of trade, the smug, the bleak, the poisonous tricks of trade, born and bred--their real life softened and watered and wasted away ... thousands who could turn into men at the right song, the right word. I always thought of you, Bessie--as one of the great helpers. If you can wait, the way will come. I will help you to wait. I came back to New York to help you----” She picked up his glass and smelled it, her eyes twinkling. “Splendid,” she said, “but are you quite sure you haven’t a stick in this ginger-ale?” Bellair leaned back. He hadn’t touched _it_ yet. Perhaps something would come, better than words. It was not straight-going--this work that he had dreamed; always a shock in bringing down dreams from Sinai; always something deadly in meeting the empirical. He smiled. “Just ginger-ale, Bessie, but you are a stimulant. You are more beautiful than before. Not quite so girlish, but there is something new that is very intense to me----” She leaned toward him now, very eager. “I wondered what you would see. The difference was plain at once in you.... Tell me what you see----”