such--pathetic
innocence, in truth!) struck awe into Hodder; her wonder was matched
by his own. Could there be another meaning in life than the pursuit of
pleasure, than the weary effort to keep the body alive?

Such was her query, unformulated. What animated these persons who had
struggled over her so desperately, Sally Grower, Mr. Bentley, and Hodder
himself? Thus her opening mind. For she had a mind.

Mr. Bentley was the chief topic, and little by little he became exalted
into a mystery of which she sought the explanation.

"I never knew anybody like him," she would exclaim.

"Why, I'd seen him on Dalton Street with the children following him, and
I saw him again that day of the funeral. Some of the girls I knew used
to laugh at him. We thought he was queer. And then, when you brought
me to him that morning and he got up and treated me like a lady, I just
couldn't stand it. I never felt so terrible in my life. I just wanted
to die, right then and there. Something inside of me kept pressing
and pressing, until I thought I would die. I knew what it was to hate
myself, but I never hated myself as I have since then.

"He never says anything about God, and you don't, but when he comes in
here he seems like God to me. He's so peaceful,--he makes me peaceful.
I remember the minister in Madison,--he was a putty-faced man with
indigestion,--and when he prayed he used to close his eyes and try to
look pious, but he never fooled me. He never made me believe he knew
anything about God. And don't think for a minute he'd have done what you
and Miss Grower and Mr. Bentley did! He used to cross the street to
get out of the way of drunken men--he wouldn't have one of them in his
church. And I know of a girl he drove out of town because she had a
baby and her sweetheart wouldn't marry her. He sent her to hell. Hell's
here--isn't it?"

These sudden remarks of hers surprised and troubled him. But they had
another effect, a constructive effect. He was astonished, in going over
such conversations afterwards, to discover that her questions and
his efforts to answer them in other than theological terms were both
illuminating and stimulating. Sayings in the Gospels leaped out in his
mind, fired with new meanings; so simple, once perceived, that he was
amazed not to have seen them before. And then he was conscious of a
palpitating joy which left in its wake a profound thankfulness. He made
no attempt as yet to correlate these increment