What place were they to occupy in this maelstrom? Two ways were
open--one, to dwell in the dungeons and the horrors as poor among the
poor; the other, to come as different beings--as frequent visitors--from
another world. Jim, with his whole-souled abandon, was for the former;
but Belle thought that all he would gain in that way would be more than
offset by loss of touch with the other world. At that time those two
worlds were at war and she contended that his place was to stand between
the world of power and the world of need.

Their compromise was a little flat on the second floor of a house in
Englewood, near enough to the rolling Lake to afford a glimpse of it and
convenient to the open stretch that is now the famous Jackson Park.
Here, with pretty rugs and curtains and pictures of horses and hills,
they lined the home nest and gathered the best thoughts of the lives
they had lived. Here at all times they could come assured of peace and
rest.

Then came the meeting with the Board of Deacons, the preliminary visits
to the field of work, where the streets were full of misery and the slum
life rampant. A few short blocks away was another world--a world of
palaces. Jim had never before seen massed misery; he had never before
seen profligate luxury, and the shock of contrast brought to him the
sudden, overwhelming thought: "These people don't want preaching, they
want fair play. This is not a religious question, it is an economic
question." And in a flash: "The religious questions _are_ economic
questions," and all the seemingly wild utterances of old Jack Shives
came back, like a sudden overwhelming flood at the breaking of a dam. In
an instant he was staggering among the ruins of all in religious thought
that he had held holy.

When he reached their apartment that evening he was in a distraught
condition. For some time he paced up and down. At last he said: "I must
go out, Belle. I must walk alone." He spoke with intense emotion. He
longed for his mountain; there was but one thing like it near--the
mighty, moving lake. He put on his hat and strode away. Belle wanted to
go with him, but he had not asked her; her instinct also said "no";
besides, there was the physical impossibility of walking with him when
he went so striding. She sat down in the dusk to wonder--to wait.

He went to the lake shore. A heavy gale was blowing from the north and
the lake was a wild waste. It touched him as the sage plains did; and
th