"But suppose," smiled John, "that I am God’s answer to prayer, his means of helping Olaf to resist temptation. That is the mission of my church, at least that is my ideal for it; not a group of heaven-bound joy-riders, but a life-saving crew. There are twenty men in my church who would meet Olaf at a word from me and walk home with him every night till he felt able to get by the swinging doors upon his own will." Marien’s eyes were shining with a new light. "That is practical religion," she declared. "Cut out the modifier," amended John. "That _is_ religion! There are," he went on, "even some in my congregation who would take my watch upon the canal boat; but I prefer to go myself because—" "Because," Marien broke in suddenly, "because it is dangerous." Her glance was full of a new admiration for the quiet-speaking man before her, in whose eyes burned that light of almost fanatical ardor which she and others had marked before. "More because it is a delicate responsibility," the minister amended once more. "Tact that comes with experience is essential, as well as strength." "And do you do many things like that?" Marien asked, deeply impressed. "Each day is like a quilt of crazy patchwork," John laughed, and then added earnestly: "You would hardly believe the insight I get into lives of every sort and at every stage of human experience, divorces, quarrels, feuds, hatreds, crimes, loves, collapses of health or character or finance—crises of one sort or another, that make people lean heavily upon a man who is disinterestedly and sympathetically helpful." "And your reward for all this busybodying?" the actress finally asked, at the same time forcing a laugh, as if trying to make light of what had compelled her to profound thought. "A sufficient reward," answered John happily, "is the grateful regard in which hundreds, and I think I may even say thousands, of people throughout the city hold me: this, and the ever-widening doors of opportunity are my reward. These things could lift poorer clay than mine and temper it like steel. The people lean upon me. I could never fail them, and they could never fail me." The exalted confidence of the man, as he uttered these last words, which were yet without egotism, suggested the tapping of vast reservoirs of spiritual force, and as before, this awed Marien a little; but it also aroused a petty note in her nature, filling her with a jealousy like that she had experienced in the church when she saw John surrounded by all those people who seemed to take possession of him so absolutely and with such disgusting self-assurance. Manoeuvering her features into something like a pout, she asked mockingly: "And since you would not leave your mother’s meeting and your jail-bird and your wife-beater for me, is there any time at all when an all-seeing Providence would send you again to the side of a lonely woman?"