Then a "chance" came. Or, rather, he tried to make one. A rich parish decided that it could best honor God by building a new church, finer and costlier than anything else in the city, and invited several architects to submit plans. David entered the competition, not by the adroit methods Dick Holden practised, but in the simple open-handed fashion which alone was possible to him. He went to the chairman of the building committee. "Will you let me submit plans?" he asked. "I suppose so," Bixby said carelessly, eying his caller dubiously. For David, though he had carefully pressed his trousers for the occasion, was getting to be a little shabby. If you looked close you saw that his cuffs were trimmed, his necktie was threadbare and his shoes were run down at the heels. And he had not the look that speaks of success. Seeing him, Bixby did not think as people had used to think, "This is a young man who will do big things some day." "When must the plans be filed?" The chairman told him, and added, "You understand, of course, they have to be bang-up--up-to-date in every particular, and _impressive_?" "Some things," David said gravely, "are so beautiful that they are up-to-date in every age. And real beauty is always impressive because it is so rare." "Humph!" said Bixby, and dismissed his caller. David set to work that very night, going over all his old sketches in search of the best. And because none of them had ever quite satisfied him, he discarded them all. He began a new series of sketches, sitting up at nights long after he should have been asleep. He discarded these, too. For this idea must be so very good that the committee couldn't help accepting it. "I think," he told himself often, "I have reached the point where I can do something really worth while." One night when he had gone reluctantly to bed, sleep would not come. For a long while he lay staring at a white patch of moonlight on the floor. Suddenly he sat up, sprang out of bed and, still in his pajamas, sat down before his easel. In the morning Shirley found him there, looking raptly at the completed sketch. "David Quentin, what in the name of common sense are you doing here?" "Look!" he whispered, almost in awe. "This is it." Shirley looked. And she, who had picked up a little knowledge of architecture from him, knew that it was good. "Do you think," she asked, "do you think it really has a chance?" "Shirley, it's so good I can hardly believe it came out of my head. Maybe it didn't, but just passed through coming from--somewhere." He was thinking it was an inspiration. . . . Well, since then many men who ought to know have thought and said the same thing about that church.