“Well, if you knew how many evenings I’ve sat up there in my room and thought what I’d order if I ever again got hold of some rich guy who’d loosen up.  There ain’t any use trying to put up a bluff with you.  Nothing was too good for me once, caviar, pate de foie gras” (her pronunciation is not to be imitated), “chicken casserole, peach Melba, filet of beef with mushrooms,—­I’ve had ’em all, and I used to sit up and say I’d hand out an order like that.  You never do what you think you’re going to do in this life.”

The truth of this remark struck him with a force she did not suspect; stung him, as it were, into a sense of reality.

“And now,” she added pathetically, “all t want is a beefsteak!  Don’t that beat you?”

She appeared so genuinely surprised at this somewhat contemptible trick fate had played her that Hodder smiled in spite of himself.

“I didn’t recognize you at first in that get-up,” she observed, looking at his blue serge suit.  “So you’ve dropped the preacher business, have you?  You’re wise, all right.”

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

“Didn’t I tell you when you came ’round that time that you weren’t like the rest of ’em?  You’re too human.”

Once more the word, and on her lips, startled him.

“Some of the best men I have ever known, the broadest and most understanding men, have been clergymen,” he found himself protesting.

“Well, they haven’t dropped in on me.  The only one I ever saw that measured up to something like that was you, and now you’ve chucked it.”

Had he, as she expressed the matter, “chucked it”?  Her remark brought him reluctantly, fearfully, remorselessly—­agitated and unprepared as he was—­face to face with his future.

“You were too good for the job,” she declared.  “What is there in it?  There ain’t nobody converted these days that I can see, and what’s the use of gettin’ up and preach into a lot of sapheads that don’t know what religion is?  Sure they don’t.”

“Do you?” he asked.

“You’ve called my bluff.”  She laughed.  “Say, do you?” If there was anything in it you’d have kept on preachin’ to that bunch and made some of ’em believe they was headed for hell; you’d have made one of ’em that owns the flat house I live in, who gets fancy rents out of us poor girls, give it up.  That’s a nice kind of business for a church member, ain’t it?”

“Owns the house in which you live!”

“Sure.”  She smiled at him compassionately, pitying his innocence and ignorance.  “Now I come to think of it, I guess he don’t go to your church,—­it’s the big Baptist church on the boulevard.  But what’s the difference?”

“None,” said Hodder, despondently.

She regarded him curiously.

“You remember when you dropped in that night, when the kid was sick?”

He nodded.

“Well, now you ain’t in the business any more, I may as well tell you you kind of got in on me.  I was sorry for you—­honest, I was.  I couldn’t believe at first you was on the level, but it didn’t take me long to see that they had gold-bricked you, too.  I saw you weren’t wise to what they were.”