The important doorkeeper was not the only comrade who had noticed William’s return: one or two heads were turned as he came in, but for the most part the audience was intent on the words of the speaker. The heads that turned made some sign of pleased recognition to which William responded automatically, unknowing that he did so. From his seat near the door his eyes wandered slowly over the platform, the hall and its occupants—slowly and with a dull and detached curiosity. What he saw there and heard was unreal, like a scene in an unconvincing play; he had a sense of looking at these people from a great way off, of hearing their voices from a distance. Something separated and held him removed from them.... He had great difficulty in giving his attention to what the speaker was saying; yet in the old days Faraday had always stirred him and to-night he was speaking well. From thirty to forty convinced adherents assembled at a private conference are not the material upon which a public orator usually throws away his best endeavours; but Faraday that night was speaking not so much to his audience as to himself. Unadmitted, even to his secret soul, he had great and fierce need of conviction; it was with his own doubts that he wrestled, at his own head that he flung both his jeers and his arguments. He was of a finer because more intelligent mould than the Edwardeses and Jay-Blenkinsops who heard him and who were still thinking of the European tragedy as a red herring drawn by the cunning politician across the path of progress. Not for him was their happy imperviousness to the new idea, and, looking down from his platform on their assembled faces, it may have struck him, not pleasantly, that these people were in part of his making; they were, at any rate, the product of a system of which he, in common with politicians of every creed, had not scrupled to make full use. Be that as it may, he spoke feelingly and well that night; far better and more feelingly than was needed by the numbers, the attitude and calibre of his audience, which was comfortably and stubbornly determined to agree with him before he opened his mouth. He had not come to the meeting with intent to be so lengthy and urgent; he had planned to be nothing more than brief and business-like, to give and invite suggestions for a vigorous prosecution of the anti-war campaign; but when he rose to open the discussion he was carried away by his own doubts and emotions; and the "few remarks" he had thought to make flared out into a veritable speech. He fought with and poured scorn on himself in the name of others, rallying his feebleness with argument and sneering at his own hesitations. Thus he spoke eloquently and deserved the applause which greeted him when he sat down.