“No; I couldn't consider it in my paper. I suppose we must leave that where it is, unless we can affect it by analogy, and show that there is infamy for both parties to any sin committed in common. You must select your instances in other directions, but you can find plenty of them--enough and to spare. It would give the series a tremendous send-off,” said Evans, relapsing into his habitual tone, “if you would tackle this subject in your first sermon for publication. There would be money in it. The thing would make a success in the paper, and you could get somebody to reprint it in pamphlet form. Come, what do you say?” “I should say that you had just been doing something you were ashamed of,” answered Sewell. “People don't have these tremendous moral awakenings for nothing.” “And you don't think my present state of mind is a gradual outgrowth of my first consciousness of the common responsibility of actors and audience in the representation of a shameless comedy?” “No, I shouldn't think it was,” said the minister securely. “Well you're right.” Evans twisted himself about in his chair, and hung his legs over one of the arms. “The real reason why I wish you to preach this sermon is because I have just been offering a fee to the head-waiter at our hotel.” “And you feel degraded with him by his acceptance? For it _is_ a degradation.” “No, that's the strangest thing about it. I have a monopoly of the degradation, for he didn't take my dollar.” “Ah, then a sermon won't help _you!_ Why wouldn't he take it?” “He said he didn't know as he wanted any money he hadn't earned,” said Evans, with a touch of mimicry. The minister started up from his lounging attitude. “Is his name--Barker?” he asked, with unerring prescience. “Yes,” said Evans with a little surprise. “Do you know him?” “Yes,” returned the minister, falling back in his chair helplessly, not luxuriously. “So well that I knew it was he almost as soon as you came into the room to-night.” “What harm have you been doing him?” demanded the editor, in parody of the minister's acuteness in guessing the guilty operation of his own mind. “The greatest. I'm the cause of his being in Boston.”