The spiritual enthusiast is not easy to hold in check, once he has been aroused!" Enid stared at him, the pupils of her eyes dilated, her lips pale.
"You mean--?
You mean-- ?" she stammered; then her fear found voice.
"What do you mean ?" she demanded, in sharp, alarmed tones.
Bale-Corphew met her question, steadily.
"I mean," he said, with fierce vindictiveness, "that at the Gathering to-night he will be publicly denounced!" He made the declaration slowly, and each word fell with overwhelming weight upon his companion's understanding.

As in the bewildered mazes of a nightmare she saw the crowded chapel, the fanatical, unstable faces of the congregation, the six Arch-Mystics--outraged, incensed, unrelenting; and in their midst the Prophet, tall and grave and masterful, as she had seen him a hundred times.

One man facing a sea of ungoverned emotion! At the vision her heart swelled suddenly and her soul sickened.

With a gesture, almost as passionate as his own, she turned upon Bale-Corphew.
"You would denounce him before the People ?" she said, incredulously.
"You would trap him?
One man against a hundred! Oh, it would be cowardly! Cruel!" Bale-Corphew's face flamed to a deeper red.
"Cowardly?
Cowardly?
Do you know what you are saying?
The man is a thief!" For one moment she shrank before the epithet; the next she raised her head, her eyes flashing, her lips parted.
"You have no right to use that word.

You have not seen him steal." "Seen him?
No.