Page:Elmer Gantry (1927).djvu/104

 watch which reminded you of Elmer himself: large, thick, shiny, with a near-gold case.) "I merely have a date with a girl, that's all!"

He was lying, but he had been roused by his own stories, and he would have given a year of life if his boast were true. He returned to his solitary room in a fever. "God, if Juanita were only here, or Agatha, or even that little chambermaid at Solomon Junction—what the dickens was her name now?" he longed.

He sat motionless on the edge of his bed. He clenched his fists. He groaned and gripped his knees. He sprang up, to race about the room, to return and sit dolorously entranced.

"Oh, God, I can't stand it!" he moaned.

He was inconceivably lonely.

He had no friends. He had never had a friend since Jim Lefferts. Harry Zenz despised his brains, Frank Shallard despised his manners, and the rest of them he himself despised. He was bored by the droning seminary professors all day, the schoolboyish arguing all evening; and in the rash of prayer-meetings and chapel-meetings and special praise-meetings he was bored by hearing the same enthusiasts gambol in the same Scriptural rejoicings.

"Oh, yes, I want to go on and preach. Couldn't go back to just business or the farm. Miss the hymns, the being boss. But—I can't do it! God, I am so lonely! If Juanita was just here!"