"No, no, Jerry, let me alone! Oh, see the poor woman, she is too ill to sing! She has lost her voice--do you know it?" And so she has. With a clutch at her throat and a pathetic turn of her eyes to the speaker, the little lieutenant shakes her head at him and is dumb. He seats her deftly on a camp stool by the drummer, pats her shoulder, sends a friendly gutter-rat with the face of a sneak-thief for water, and turns to the crowd. "Come now, friends, the lieutenant 'ere 'as lost 'er voice along o' you, an' tryin' to save yer! Can't you pipe up, some o' you? If some of you'd sing a bit with us, now, maybe we'd be able to take back _one_ soul to Christ with us to-night. Can't one o' yer sing?" "I will sing!" says some one near me--and it is Margarita! I clutch her cape fiercely, but it slips off in my hand and she is at the drum, and the lane that opened for her closes for me, and I fight in vain to reach her--Oh, it must be a dream! "I _need_ Thee every _hour_...." Ah-h-h! The crowd sighs with the old familiar joy, the magic of the golden voice slips like a veil over the cruel angles of their broken lives and mists and softens everything. She has a slip of printed paper in her hand and reads seriously from it; some one holds the transparency near her shoulder for light--her white shoulders, bare in Trafalgar Square! [Illustration: THEY ARE STILL AS DEATH, TRANCED IN THOSE LIQUID BELL-TONES] "I _need_ Thee every _hour_, Most _gracious_ Lord, No _tender_ voice like _thine_ Can _peace_ afford...." They are still as death, tranced in those liquid bell-tones. The great drum shivers, as it shivered, of old, a tom-tom, across the African desert; the old, primal thrill creeps through my blood--good heavens, is this fear? Is it superstition? _Is it religion?_ "I _need_ Thee--oh, I _need_ Thee!" The woman sobs like a damned soul beside me; a man coughs huskily. Will no one stop her? They have wedged me so that I cannot breathe, I feel them gathering from the nearby streets. And there she stands, coral like blood on her bare neck, the scarf fallen from her black hair, the plea of all humanity pouring in a great anguished stream of melody out of her white throat. "I _need_ Thee oh, I _need_ Thee, Ev'ry _hour_ I need Thee!" The tambourine shudders barbarically across the smooth flood of her voice: it is the tingling crash of the Greek Mysteries--and I had thought it vulgar! I hear hansoms jingling up--what will Roger say? He would kill them all, if he could, I know, and yet no one there would hurt a hair of her head--and does she not belong to the public? God knows the poor devils need something--is it that, then? Is it a real thing? Do people fight for it like that? For this imperious Voice is agonising for something and the drum is the beat of its heart.