ed the bell.

"Yes, ten thousand times more the prostitute than that poor fallen girl
with her taint of blood and will! There would be no such women as she is
to fall victims to evil companionship if there were no such men as you
are to excuse their betrayers and to side with them. Who is most the
prostitute--the woman who sells her body, or the man who sells his soul?"

"You're mad, sir! But I want no scene----"

"You are the worst prostitute on the streets of London, and yet you are
in the Church, in the pulpit, and you call yourself a follower of the One
who forgave the woman and shamed the hypocrites, and had not where to lay
his head!"

But the canon had faced about and fled out of the room.

The footman came in answer to the bell, and, finding no one but John
Storm, he told him that a lady was waiting for him in a carriage at the
door.

It was Mrs. Callender. She had come to say that she had called at the
hospital for Polly Love, and the girl had refused to go to the home at
Soho.

"But whatever's amiss with ye, man?" she said. "You might have seen a
ghost!"

He had come out bareheaded, carrying his hat in his hand.

"It's all over," he said. "I've waited weeks and weeks for it, but it's
over at last. It was of no use mincing matters, so I spoke out."

His red eyes were ablaze, but a great load seemed to be lifted off his
mind, and his soul seemed to exult.

"I have told him I must leave him, and I am to go, immediately. The
disease was dire, and the remedy had to be dire also."

The old lady was holding her breath and watching his flushed face with
strained attention.

"And what may ye be going to do now?"

"To become a religious in something more than the name; to leave the
world altogether with its idleness and pomp and hypocrisy and unreality."

"Get yoursel' some flesh on your bones first, man. It's easy to see ye've
no been sleeping or eating these days and days together."

"That's nothing--nothing at all. God can not take half your soul. You
must give yourself entirely."

"Eh, laddie, laddie, I feared me this was what ye were coming til. But a
man can not bury himself before he is dead. He may bury the half of
himself, but is it the better half? What of his thoughts--his wandering
thoughts? Choose for yoursel', though, and if you must go--if you must
hide yoursel' forever, and this is the last I'm to see of ye--ye may kiss
me, laddie--I'm old enough, surely.--Go on, James, man, what for