Very slowly, ‘Oh, Ford, Ford, Ford,’ it said diminishingly and on a descending scale. A sensation of warmth radiated thrillingly out from the solar plexus to every extremity of the bodies of those who listened; tears came into their eyes; their hearts, their bowels seemed to move within them, as though with an independent life. ‘Ford!’ they were melting, ‘Ford!’ dissolved, dissolved. Then, in another tone, suddenly, startlingly. ‘Listen!’ trumpeted the Voice. ‘Listen!’ They listened. After a pause, sunk to a whisper, but a whisper, somehow, more penetrating than the loudest cry. ‘The feet of the Greater Being,’ it went on, and repeated the words: ‘The feet of the Greater Being.’ The whisper almost expired. ‘The feet of the Greater Being are on the stairs.’ And once more there was silence; and the expectancy, momentarily relaxed, was stretched again, tauter, tauter, almost to the tearing point. The feet of the Greater Being—oh, they heard them, they heard them, coming softly down the stairs, coming nearer and nearer down the invisible stairs. The feet of the Greater Being. And suddenly the tearing point was reached. Her eyes staring, her lips parted, Morgana Rothschild sprang to her feet.

‘I hear him,’ she cried. ‘I hear him.’

‘He’s coming,’ shouted Sarojini Engels.

‘Yes, he’s coming, I hear him.’ Fifi Bradlaugh and Tom Kawaguchi rose simultaneously to their feet.

‘Oh, oh, oh!’ Joanna inarticulately testified.

‘He’s coming!’ yelled Jim Bokanovsky.

The President leaned forward and, with a touch, released a delirium of cymbals and blown brass, a fever of tom-tomming.

‘Oh, he’s coming!’ screamed Clara Deterding. ‘Aie!’ and it was as though she were having her throat cut.

Feeling that it was time for him to do something, Bernard also jumped up and shouted: ‘I hear him; He’s coming.’ But it wasn’t true. He heard nothing and, for him, nobody was coming. Nobody—in spite of the music, in spite of the mounting excitement. But he waved his arms, he shouted with the best of them; and when the others began to jig and stamp and shuffle, he also jigged and shuffled.

Round they went, a circular procession of dancers, each with hands on the hips of the dancer preceding, round and round, shouting in unison, stamping to the rhythm of the music with their feet, beating it, beating it out with hands on the buttocks in front; twelve pairs of hands beating as one; as one, twelve buttocks slabbily resounding. Twelve as one, twelve as one. ‘I hear Him, I hear Him coming.’ The music quickened; faster beat the feet, faster, faster fell the rhythmic hands. And all at once a great synthetic bass boomed out the words which announced the approaching atonement and final consummation of solidarity, the coming of the Twelve-in-One, the incarnation of the Greater Being. ‘Orgy-porgy,’ it sang, while the tom-toms continued to beat their feverish tattoo:

Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun, Kiss the girls and make them One. Boys at one with girls at peace; Orgy-porgy gives release.

‘Orgy-porgy,’ the dancers caught up the liturgical refrain, ‘Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun, kiss the girls…’ And as they sang, the lights began slowly to fade—to fade and at the same time to grow warmer, richer, redder, until at last they were dancing in the crimson twilight of an Embryo Store. ‘Orgy-Porgy…’ In their blood-coloured and fœtal darkness the dancers continued for a while to circulate, to beat and beat out the indefatigable rhythm. ‘Orgy-porgy…’ Then the circle wavered, broke, fell in partial disintegration on the ring of couches which surrounded—circle enclosing circle—the table and its planetary chairs. ‘Orgy-porgy…’ Tenderly the deep Voice crooned and cooed; in the red twilight it was as though some enormous negro dove were hovering benevolently over the now prone or supine dancers.

They were standing on the roof; Big Henry had just sung eleven. The night was calm and warm.