They waited a long ten minutes, and then went off to Strether's rooms. His oak was sported, and no amount of banging, not even Donaldson's uproarious "Gus Strether! Open, you old blighter. Come on, Gussie! Pull up your socks. Who's your lady friend?" echoing through the night, was of any use. The three departed together, Donaldson to Manning's rooms for a drink. But Paul refused the invitation. He climbed his stairway, a bit conscious-stricken, and sported his own door. He glanced round the little room, and drew consolation from its remote comfortable air. Then he remembered that it was Saturday night and he had an address for the morrow to prepare. He sighed and sat down to think. (3) The children's service proved to be a small affair compared with his own at Claxted and requires no further notice, but the open-air meeting on Parker's Piece was a different matter. When Paul at last found himself on a chair beneath the central lamp-post, it was with feelings he had never had before. A big crowd of townsfolk surrounded him, but among them were 'Varsity men, some members of the C.I.C.C.U., but others who were not. Paul realised himself and his position as he had never done in Lambeth Court. He was not merely preaching repentance to obvious and ignorant sinners; he was challenging life and thought which could meet him on equal terms. The sense of it surged through him as he stood there and read the curious faces, yellow in the lamplight, that ringed him round against the foggy gloom behind. Even these town's men were a new audience to him. They had caught something of the criticism, the independence, of the University; and they were also sarcastic, as Mr. Mavis and Mrs. Roper might be, having seen in their day many things. This particular young gentleman's whim was religion, just as another's might be the breaking of windows, or the purchase of a certain kind of picture, or some form of sport, or highly coloured socks. One had to take these phenomena philosophically, thankful if one's own young gentleman had the more harmless crazes. The sensitive Paul was aware that this was the temper of the greater part of his audience, while the lesser part would be critical, amused, or ragging undergraduates. He faced the crowd uncertainly for a few moments. And then the blinding conviction in which he had been nurtured swept down on him that, after all, these were but sinful souls needing the Saviour, their very complexity but making the more necessary His divine simplicity. Indecision went to the winds. As he wrote home later to his father, he, thereafter, "preached unto them Jesus."