“You thought—­” he began and paused dumfounded.

“Why not?” she retorted.  “It looked easy to me,—­your line.  How was I to know at first that they had you fooled?  How was I to know you wasn’t in the game?”

“The game?”

“Say, what else is it but a game?  You must be on now, ain’t you?  Why. do they put up to keep the churches going?  There ain’t any coupons coming out of ’em.

“Maybe some of these millionaires think they can play all the horses and win,—­get into heaven and sell gold bricks on the side.  But I guess most of ’em don’t think about heaven.  They just use the church for a front, and take in strangers in the back alley,—­downtown.”

Hodder was silent, overwhelmed by the brutal aptness of her figures.  Nor did he take the trouble of a defence, of pointing out that hers was not the whole truth.  What really mattered—­he saw—­was what she and those like her thought.  Such minds were not to be disabused by argument; and indeed he had little inclination for it then.

“There’s nothing in it.”

By this expression he gathered she meant life.  And some hidden impulse bade him smile at her.

“There is this,” he answered.

She opened her mouth, closed it and stared at him, struck by his expression, striving uneasily to fathom hidden depths in his remark.

“I don’t get on to you,” she said lamely.  “I didn’t that other time.  I never ran across anybody like you.”

He tried to smile again.

“You mustn’t mind me,” he answered.

They fell into an oasis of silence, surrounded by mad music and laughter.  Then came the long-nosed waiter carrying the beefsteak aloft, followed by a lad with a bucket of ice, from which protruded the green and gold neck of a bottle.  The plates were put down, the beefsteak carved, the champagne opened and poured out with a flourish.  The woman raised her glass.

“Here’s how!” she said, with an attempt at gayety.  And she drank to him.  “It’s funny how I ran across you again, ain’t it?” She threw back her head and laughed.

He raised his glass, tasted the wine, and put it down again.  A sheet of fire swept through him.

“What’s the matter with it?  Is it corked?” she demanded.  “It goes to the right spot with me.”

“It seems very good,” he said, trying to smile, and turning to the food on his plate.  The very idea of eating revolted him—­and yet he made the attempt:  he had a feeling, ill defined, that consequences of vital importance depended upon this attempt, on his natural acceptance of the situation.  And, while he strove to reduce the contents of his plate, he racked his brain for some subject of conversation.  The flamboyant walls of the room pressed in on every side; comment of that which lay within their limits was impossible,—­but he could not, somehow, get beyond them.  Was there in the whole range of life one easy topic which they might share in common?  Yet a bond existed between this woman and himself—­a bond of which he now became aware, and which seemed strangely to grow stronger as the minutes passed and no words were spoken.  Why was it that she, too, to whom speech came so easily, had fallen dumb?  He began to long for some remark, however disconcerting.  The tension increased.