It
appeared that he was leaving England; and to her questions why, and
where, he had only shrugged his shoulders. Up on this dusty platform, in
the hot bare hall, facing all those people, listening to speeches whose
sense she was too languid and preoccupied to take in, the whole medley
of thoughts, and faces round her, and the sound of the speakers'
voices, formed a kind of nightmare, out of which she noted with extreme
exactitude the colour of her mother's neck beneath a large black hat,
and the expression on the face of a Committee man to the right, who
was biting his fingers under cover of a blue paper. She realized that
someone was speaking amongst the audience, casting forth, as it were,
small bunches of words. She could see him--a little man in a black coat,
with a white face which kept jerking up and down.
"I feel that this is terrible," she heard him say; "I feel that this
is blasphemy. That we should try to tamper with the greatest force, the
greatest and the most sacred and secret-force, that--that moves in the
world, is to me horrible. I cannot bear to listen; it seems to make
everything so small!" She saw him sit down, and her mother rising to
answer.
"We must all sympathize with the sincerity and to a certain extent with
the intention of our friend in the body of the hall. But we must ask
ourselves:
"Have we the right to allow ourselves the luxury, of private feelings in
a matter which concerns the national expansion.
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