She straightened herself at these words, and her stature helped to give to this vindication both dignity and strength. There was something splendid in the gesture, the emphasis, and the inflection with which these words were said. For the first time Lydia's speech was here interrupted by applause; it began far away from her and was soon caught up by others, it swelled through the building, and feelings long pent up in hushed attention to her now found relief in an expression of triumphant approval; a few in their excitement rose to their feet, then more, till all, except Chairo, who remained resolutely seated, stood wildly gesticulating their admiration for the girl who had the courage to face them in vindication of a love upon which some had wished to throw disgrace, but which now she held up to universal honor. The applause lasted several minutes; if it died away in one corner it was vociferously renewed in another, and when at last, out of very weariness, it came to an end, Lydia resumed: "But all I have said is but a preface to what I have still to say: I have spoken to you of myself, but what shall I say to you of Chairo? I have told you of a duty I felt to him, but to every duty is there not a corresponding right? And if Chairo had rights does he not stand, too, for the rights of all his sex?" Once more the chamber rang with renewed applause, and Chairo for the first time raised his head and looked at Lydia. Now at last she had lifted the subject to a level which eliminated him. He was no longer the issue; she was speaking for all men, for the rights universal of manhood, which the cult had, in his case, ignored and must at last be vindicated. "I have told you that by implication, if not by express words, Chairo had reason to know I loved him; was he to stand by and see the rights I had given him denied, rights for which he has stood, not for himself alone, but for all men long before his own became involved? He stands charged here with sacrilege and with violence. Mr. Speaker, and gentlemen of the legislature, so far as I am concerned, he is guilty of neither the one nor the other." A deep murmur passed through the chamber as Lydia's voice impressively lowered on these final words. "Had the woman he snatched from Demeter's sanctuary been indeed fitted for it, then he would have been guilty of both. But he knew I was not fitted for it, he knew that I belonged to him, he knew that once I felt his presence in my room I would consent--_and I consented_." Chairo, whose eyes had remained riveted on Lydia ever since he raised them, now lowered them again, and he covered his face with his hands. That so sacred a thing to him as Lydia and his love for her should be dragged into a public discussion was cruel to him, but that the story should be told as Lydia told it, filled his heart with a mixture of triumph and bitterness he could not endure to show.