r it
now," replied Rollin, smiling again. "You see, I asked myself after
that night at the tent, you remember" (he spoke hurriedly and his
voice trembled a little), "what purpose I could now have in my life
to redeem it, to satisfy my thought of Christian discipleship? And
the more I thought of it, the more I was driven to a place where I
knew I must take up the cross. Did you ever think that of all the
neglected beings in our social system none are quite so completely
left alone as the fast young men who fill the clubs and waste their
time and money as I used to? The churches look after the poor,
miserable creatures like those in the Rectangle; they make some
effort to reach the working man, they have a large constituency
among the average salary-earning people, they send money and
missionaries to the foreign heathen, but the fashionable, dissipated
young men around town, the club men, are left out of all plans for
reaching and Christianizing. And yet no class of people need it
more. I said to myself: 'I know these men, their good and their bad
qualities. I have been one of them. I am not fitted to reach the
Rectangle people. I do not know how. But I think I could possibly
reach some of the young men and boys who have money and time to
spend.' So that is what I have been trying to do. When I asked as
you did, What would Jesus do?' that was my answer. It has been also
my cross."

Rollin's voice was so low on this last sentence that Rachel had
difficulty in hearing him above the noise around them, But she knew
what he had said. She wanted to ask what his methods were. But she
did not know how to ask him. Her interest in his plan was larger
than mere curiosity. Rollin Page was so different now from the
fashionable young man who had asked her to be his wife that she
could not help thinking of him and talking with him as if he were an
entirely new acquaintance.

They had turned off the avenue and were going up the street to
Rachel's home. It was the same street where Rollin had asked Rachel
why she could not love him. They were both stricken with a sudden
shyness as they went on. Rachel had not forgotten that day and
Rollin could not. She finally broke a long silence by asking what
she had not found words for before.

"In your work with the club men, with your old acquaintances, what
sort of reception do they give you? How do you approach them? What
do they say?"

Rollin was relieved when Rachel spoke. He answered qu