"Then to-night," the actress urged, "after your sermon is done?" As if anxious to forestall refusal, she gave him no chance to reply, but continued with some display of her old vivacity of spirit: "We will have a supper, as we did that night you came in after the play. Julie is still with me, and another maid, and a secretary, and sometimes my ’personal representative.’ Oh, I have quite a retinue now! Do say you will come, even though it is an unseemly hour for a ministerial call," she pleaded, and again her eyes were eloquent. But it was not the hour that made John hesitate. He felt himself immune from charges of indiscretion. He knew that despite his youthful thirty years, he seemed ages older than the oldest of his congregation, a man removed from every possibility of error; one whose simple, open life of day-by-day devotion to the good of all who sought him seemed in itself a sufficient armor-proof against mischance. He came and went, in the upper and in the underworld, almost as he would; saw whom he would and where he would. Jails, theaters, hotels, questionable side entrances, boulevards and alleys were accustomed to the sight of his comings and goings. If the stalwart figure of the man loomed at midnight in a dance hall on the Barbary Coast of San Francisco or in the darkest alleys of an Oakland water-front saloon, his presence was remarked, but his purpose was never doubted. He was there for the good of some one, to save some girl, to haul back some mother’s boy, to fight side by side with some man against his besetting sin, whether it be wine or woman, or the gaming table. Therefore he could go to call on Marien Dounay at ten o’clock at night at the Hotel St. Albans as freely as on a brother minister at noon. What had made him suddenly withhold his acceptance of the invitation was the entry of something of the old lightness of spirit into her tones for a moment, accompanied by the suggestion of a supper. He knew enough of the whimsical obliquities of Marien Dounay’s nature to appreciate that he must meet her socially in order to minister to her spiritually; but he did not propose that the solemn purposes of his call should be made an opportunity for entertainment or personal display. However, Marien had instantly divined her mistake. "Doctor Hampstead!" she began afresh, and this time her voice was low and her utterance rapid. "My season closed in New York last Saturday night. I was compelled to wait over three days to sign the contract for my London engagement. The moment that was out of the way, I rushed entirely across this country to see you! I arrived this morning. I came here at once. Oh, I must talk to you immediately and disabuse your mind of something—something terrible that I have waited five years to wipe out." She clasped her hands nervously, and her luminous eyes grew misty, while she seemed in danger of losing her composure entirely, an unheard-of thing for Marien Dounay.