To-morrow quiet would
begin; but she had a new, strange, intense terror of to-night. This
feeling lasted through the early part of Quisante's speech, when he was
still in a quiet vein and showed some signs of physical weakness. But as
he went on it vanished and in its place came the old faith and the old
illusion. For he gathered force, he put out his strength, he exhaled
vitality. Again she sought her friends' faces and marked with joy and
triumph that their eyes were now set on the speaker and their attention
held firmly, as the fine resonant voice filled the building and seemed to
resent the confinement of its walls, or even more when a whisper, heard
only by a miracle as she thought, thrilled even the most distant
listener. The speech was being all that it had been going to be, his
confidence and hers were to be justified. The pronouncement that the
country waited for was coming, the fighting men were to get the lead they
wanted, the attack was sounded, the battle was being opened to the sound
of a trumpet-call. May leant forward, listening.
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