actress finally asked, at the same time forcing a laugh, as if trying to make light of what had compelled her to profound thought.
"A sufficient reward," answered John happily, "is the grateful regard in which hundreds, and I think I may even say thousands, of people throughout the city hold me: this, and the ever-widening doors of opportunity are my reward. These things could lift poorer clay than mine and temper it like steel. The people lean upon me. I could never fail them, and they could never fail me."
The exalted confidence of the man, as he uttered these last words, which were yet without egotism, suggested the tapping of vast reservoirs of spiritual force, and as before, this awed Marien a little; but it also aroused a petty note in her nature, filling her with a jealousy like that she had experienced in the church when she saw John surrounded by all those people who seemed to take possession of him so absolutely and with such disgusting self-assurance.
Manœuvering her features into something like a pout, she asked mockingly:
"And since you would not leave your mother's meeting and your jail-bird and your wife-beater for me, is there any time at all when an all-seeing Providence would send you again to the side of a lonely woman?"
The minister smiled at the irony, while scanning once more the pages of his little date-book. "To look in after prayer meeting about nine-thirty on Wednesday night would be my next opportunity, I should say," he reported presently.
"Wednesday!" complained Marien. "It is three eternities away. However," and her voice grew crisp with decision, "Wednesday night it shall be. In the meantime, do you speak anywhere? I shall attend the
