“Some of the best men I have ever known, the broadest and most understanding men, have been clergymen,” he found himself protesting. “Well, they haven't dropped in on me. The only one I ever saw that measured up to something like that was you, and now you've chucked it.” Had he, as she expressed the matter, “chucked it”? Her remark brought him reluctantly, fearfully, remorselessly--agitated and unprepared as he was--face to face with his future. “You were too good for the job,” she declared. “What is there in it? There ain't nobody converted these days that I can see, and what's the use of gettin' up and preach into a lot of sapheads that don't know what religion is? Sure they don't.” “Do you?” he asked. “You've called my bluff.” She laughed. “Say, do YOU? If there was anything in it you'd have kept on preachin' to that bunch and made some of 'em believe they was headed for hell; you'd have made one of 'em that owns the flat house I live in, who gets fancy rents out of us poor girls, give it up. That's a nice kind of business for a church member, ain't it?” “Owns the house in which you live!” “Sure.” She smiled at him compassionately, pitying his innocence and ignorance. “Now I come to think of it, I guess he don't go to your church,--it's the big Baptist church on the boulevard. But what's the difference?” “None,” said Hodder, despondently. She regarded him curiously. “You remember when you dropped in that night, when the kid was sick?” He nodded. “Well, now you ain't in the business any more, I may as well tell you you kind of got in on me. I was sorry for you--honest, I was. I couldn't believe at first you was on the level, but it didn't take me long to see that they had gold-bricked you, too. I saw you weren't wise to what they were.” “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.