The two little drawing rooms had been thrown into one, and they were already crowded when Vance slipped in at the back. Before him, rank on rank, the packed heads of the "Seekers" stretched up to an improvised platform, with wax lights and a table covered with old brocade. Vance did not recognize many people; most of those present seemed to belong to other regions of Mrs. Spear's rambling activities. But he was sure they were representative of their kind; Mrs. Spear was not the woman to have anything but the newest, even in religion. This world of spiritual investigation was unfamiliar to him; there were no "Seekers" in the Tarrant group, much less at the Cocoanut Tree or Rebecca Stram's. The audience seemed mainly composed of elderly men with beards and gold-rimmed glasses, pallid youths, and ladies of indeterminate age, in black silk or Greek draperies. He was surprised to see among them Mrs. Pulsifer, with Tarrant at her side, and in another part of the room the sleek heads and jewelled arms of a cluster of smart young women who belonged to the Tarrant set. Such a mixture was unexpected, and still more so the earnest and attentive expression of the fashionable members of the audience, who appeared to have come in good faith, and not to scoff, as he had feared.

Vance forgot to wonder if Halo Tarrant were in the room; forgot everything but his passionate curiosity to see what impression his grandmother would make on an audience so strangely blent, and so new to her. Whoever they were, he knew the "Seekers" would test Mrs. Scrimser by standards other and more searching than those of Euphoria, or even of Dakin and Lakeshore; and his heart was up in arms to defend her.

And now here she was, in the soft illumination of the little platform. As he gazed at her across the fervent backs of the "Seekers" she seemed to him to have grown still larger. Saidie Toler, seated at one elbow, looked like a shadow, Mrs. Mennenkoop, at the other, like a shrivelled virgin. Womanhood, vast and dominant, billowed out between them.

Mrs. Scrimser rose to her feet. Mrs. Lotus Mennenkoop had spoken a few words of introduction; phrases about a "new message," "our spiritual leader," "the foremost exponent of the new psychical ethics," had drifted by unheeded; the "Seekers" wanted Mrs. Scrimser.

She swayed to them across the table and began. "Meet God," she said, spacing her syllables impressively; then she paused. Her voice sounded richer, more resonant than ever; but Vance's unaccustomed ear was shocked by her intonation. Had she always had those hideous drawling gutturals?