Page:Elmer Gantry (1927).djvu/419

 How's that?' I said.

Because Jesus has been with me all the time!

They almost applauded.

They told him afterward that he was immense, and invited him to address them whenever he returned to London.

"Wait," he reflected, "till I get back to Zenith and tell old Potts and Hickenlooper that!"

As they rode to the hotel on the 'bus, Cleo sighed, "Oh, you were wonderful! But I never knew you had such a wild time of it in your first pastorate."

"Oh, well, it was nothing. A man that's a real man has to take the rough with the smooth."

"That's so!"

He stood impatiently on a corner of the Rue de la Paix, while Cleo gaped into the window of a perfumer. (She was too well trained to dream of asking him to buy expensive perfume.) He looked at the façades in the Place Vendôme.

"Not much class—too kind of plain," he decided.

A little greasy man edged up to him, covertly sliding toward him a pack of postcards, and whispered, "Lovely cards—only two francs each."

"Oh," said Elmer intelligently, "you speak English."

"Sure. All language."

Then Elmer saw the topmost card and he was galvanized.

"Whee! Golly! Two francs apiece?" He seized the pack, gloating— But Cleo was suddenly upon him, and he handed back the cards, roaring, "You get out of here or I'll call a cop! Trying to sell obscene pictures—and to a minister of the gospel! Cleo, these Europeans have dirty minds!"

It was on the steamer home that he met and became intimate with J. E. North, the renowned vice-slayer, executive secretary of the National Association for the Purification of Art and the