a strange place and
accommodate his going to the man who was guiding him. All the way there
seemed to be a sort of intercourse between himself and his Companion.
His soul was putting forth great questions that he would some day take
up in detail and go over little by little, as one will verify a problem
that one has worked out. But now he was working it out, becoming
satisfied in his soul that this was the only way to solve the great
otherwise unanswerable problems of the universe.

They had gone for perhaps three miles or more from the morgue, traveling
for the most part through narrow streets crowded full of small
dwelling-houses interspersed by cheap stores and saloons. The night
lowered! the stars were not on duty. A cold wind from the river swept
around corners, reminding him of the dripping yellow hair of the girl in
the morgue. It cut like a knife through Courtland's heavy overcoat and
made him wish he had brought his muffler. He stuffed his gloved hands
into his pockets. Even in their fur linings they were stiff and cold. He
thought of the girl's little light serge jacket and shivered visibly as
they turned into another street where vacant lots on one side left a
wide sweep for the wind and sent it tempesting along freighted with dust
and stinging bits of sand. The clouds were heavy as with snow, only that
it was too cold to snow. One fancied only biting steel could fall from
clouds like that on a night so bitter. And any moment he might have
turned back, gone a block to one side, and caught the trolley across to
the university, where light and warmth and friends were waiting. And
what was this one little lost girl to him? A stranger? No, she was no
longer a stranger! She had become something infinitely precious to the
whole universe. God cared, and that was enough! He could not be a friend
of God unless he cared as God cared! He was demonstrating facts that he
had never apprehended before.

The lights were out in most of the houses that they passed, for it was
growing late. There were not quite so many saloons. The streets loomed
wide ahead, the line of houses dark on the left, and the stretch of
vacant lots, with the river beyond on the right. Across the river a
line of dark buildings with occasional blink of lights blended into the
dark of the sky, and the wind merciless over all.

On ahead a couple of blocks the light flung out on the pavement and
marked another saloon. Bright doors swung back and forth.