"Suppose," he went on, but without addressing her more than before, still turning himself almost exclusively to Franks--"Suppose somebody walking along Oxford Street, brooding over an injury, and thinking how to serve the man out that had done it to him. All the numberless persons and things pass him on both sides and he sees none of them--takes no notice of anything. But he spies a man in Berners Street, in the middle of a small crowd, showing them some tricks--we won't say so good as yours, Mr. Franks, but he stops, and stares, and forgets for a moment or two that there is one brother-man he hates and would kill if he could." Here Hester found words, and said, though all but inaudibly, "He would only go away as soon as he had had enough of it, and hate him all the same!" "I know very well," answered Christopher, turning now to her, "it would not make a good man of him: but, except the ways of the world, its best ways and all, are to go for nothing in God's plans, it must be something to have the bad mood in a man stopped for a moment, just as it is something to a life to check a fever. It gives the godlike in the man, feeble, perhaps nearly exhausted, a fresh opportunity of revival. For the moment at least, the man is open to influences from another source than his hate. If the devil may catch a man at unawares when he is in an evil or unthinking mood, why should not the good Power take his opportunity when the evil spirit is asleep through the harping of a David or the feats of a Franks? I sometimes find, as I come from a theatre where I have been occupied with the interests of a stirring play, that, with a sudden rush of intelligence, I understand the things best worth understanding better than before."