“Virginia’s uncle, Dr. West, will go with us, if she goes.  I have asked her to call him up by telephone and go with us.  The Doctor is a friend of the Grays, and attended some of their meetings last winter.”

Mrs. Winslow did not say anything.  Her manner showed her complete disapproval of Rachel’s course, and Rachel felt her unspoken bitterness.

About seven o’clock the Doctor and Virginia appeared, and together the three started for the scene of the White Cross meetings.

The Rectangle was the most notorious district in Raymond.  It was on the territory close by the railroad shops and the packing houses.  The great slum and tenement district of Raymond congested its worst and most wretched elements about the Rectangle.  This was a barren field used in the summer by circus companies and wandering showmen.  It was shut in by rows of saloons, gambling hells and cheap, dirty boarding and lodging houses.

The First Church of Raymond had never touched the Rectangle problem.  It was too dirty, too coarse, too sinful, too awful for close contact.  Let us be honest.  There had been an attempt to cleanse this sore spot by sending down an occasional committee of singers or Sunday-school teachers or gospel visitors from various churches.  But the First Church of Raymond, as an institution, had never really done anything to make the Rectangle any less a stronghold of the devil as the years went by.

Into this heart of the coarse part of the sin of Raymond the traveling evangelist and his brave little wife had pitched a good-sized tent and begun meetings.  It was the spring of the year and the evenings were beginning to be pleasant.  The evangelists had asked for the help of Christian people, and had received more than the usual amount of encouragement.  But they felt a great need of more and better music.  During the meetings on the Sunday just gone the assistant at the organ had been taken ill.  The volunteers from the city were few and the voices were of ordinary quality.

“There will be a small meeting tonight, John,” said his wife, as they entered the tent a little after seven o’clock and began to arrange the chairs and light up.

“Yes, I fear so.”  Mr. Gray was a small, energetic man, with a pleasant voice and the courage of a high-born fighter.  He had already made friends in the neighborhood and one of his converts, a heavy-faced man who had just come in, began to help in the arranging of seats.

It was after eight o’clock when Alexander Powers opened the door of his office and started for home.  He was going to take a car at the corner of the Rectangle.  But he was roused by a voice coming from the tent.

It was the voice of Rachel Winslow.  It struck through his consciousness of struggle over his own question that had sent him into the Divine Presence for an answer.  He had not yet reached a conclusion.  He was tortured with uncertainty.  His whole previous course of action as a railroad man was the poorest possible preparation for anything sacrificial.  And he could not yet say what he would do in the matter.