In his words was no tang of the study, none of the didactic methods of the arm-chair student, no array of statistics. What he expressed had been seared upon his soul, in inextinguishable letters and as he spoke shooting pictures etched themselves as if on some quivering panorama in his brain: he saw the black bottle in the wall-cabinet of his inner office--the hidden sanctuary where he had signed away his talent and linked his years to the demon of remorse: he saw the representative of the great Corporation, whose power flowed from that traffic, holding in his merciless hand the happiness of a woman that had been dearer than his own life: he saw the cringing hatred in the eyes of Paddy the Brick, the furtive drink-lined faces of the jail corridors. And in his passionate denunciation, he called upon those who heard him to do their part to rid the state of its Master and to set it free. Lastly, in a peroration which carried all before it, he pictured a community from which the unendurable stain had been forever wiped away, the pitfalls of its youth filled up, the shame of its prisons lightened--a community ruled no longer by King Alcohol, but by the Genius of the Home, to which freedom no longer stood for ribald license and self-harm, but for the Common Good. He stopped amid a dense silence--the truest tribute to real oratory--then with a great burst, the storm of approval came. It filled the hall with electric feeling, surging in waves that overtopped all decorum and made the hour significant and momentous. Near him Harry saw the party leaders, among them Judge Allen, newly-elected President of the Civic Club; they showed a singular self-assurance overlaid by vivid excitement. In the galleries were banks of feminine faces, tier on tier, merged in a tumultuous hand-clapping like silver rain. Below, the house was on its feet, a sea of waving flags and handkerchiefs. The tumult swelled, then died away to pulsing band-music and in the subsidence, Brent leaned over Harry's shoulder to give him the quick pressure of a hand--words could not have said so much. It was not until the convention had adjourned for an hour's recess that Harry could escape from the congratulations that poured upon him where he sat. While he spoke, the sense of mastery and domination had possessed him; now he was feeling the inevitable revulsion, and with it came the fading of his confidence and the relifting of the old sickening question. It had surged back before the applause had died away, the moment he had released his mind from the clamping resolution of his purpose, springing upon him like a cunning enemy who had dogged him in the shadow. His roseate speculations of the Bungalow seemed now but hollow wraiths that had mocked him with an unrealisable promise. Could he ever for a moment have cheated himself into forgetfulness of the _impasse_ that lay there?