the same glance showed that she was not dangerous to him, for the dark eyes looked at him hungrily, with something strangely like adoration in them, and there was an expression of longing upon the beautiful face.
When he stood up to preach, she followed his every movement and appeared to drink down his utterance thirstily. Skilled now in spiritual diagnosis, the minister of All People's read her swiftly. She had gained—but she had not gained all. Something was still desired, and, he could not help but believe, desired of him. Having coldly driven him from her with a terrible kind of violence, she had come back humbly, almost beseechingly.
So marked was this suggestion of intense longing that the feeling of horror and revulsion which had come to Hampstead with the entry of the actress gave way entirely to an emotion of pity and a desire to help, and he tried earnestly to make his sermon in some degree a message to the woman's heart.
The position of the Reverend John Hampstead in All People's Church and in the community round about was due to no miracle, but had grown naturally enough out of the strong heart of the man and his experiences.
When, for instance, in the early days at the chapel, John missed the Pedersen children from the Sunday school, and found their mother in tears at home because the children had no shoes, and that they had no shoes because Olaf gambled away his weekly wage in "Beaney" Webster's pool room where race-track bets were made, and poker and other gambling games were played, all in defiance of law,—and when he found the police supine and prosecutors indifferent,—the practical minded young divine sent Deacon Mullin—who, to his frequent discomfiture resembled a "tin can" sport more than a church official—into Beaney's to bet upon a horse. When the
