Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/349

 blind compass. He felt at peace with the world, at peace with the heavens, at peace with himself. He felt at peace even with his love—content to give all and expect nothing, satisfied to be near her so that he might help her, willing to wait without a word of encouragement, so certain of his goal that he did not even raise his eyes to see how far it was away.

His little room received him like a home. He kindled a fire of small wooden blocks which he had bought for two cents a bundle, from "Tony," the Italian vendor down the street; and he warmed the dregs of his breakfast's pot of coffee, to drink it sitting on the side of his bed, holding his cup on his knee, smiling, like a camper in the wilderness who looks back, from the rise of a hill, over the difficult and tangled valleys he has crossed.

He went to church with her in the morning—to a house of fashionable worship on Fifth Avenue—unconscious of the fact that he was no longer in revolt against the "police of organized religion"' and he listened, like a child at the theatre, to the music and the singing and the literary eloquence of a minister who flattered and smiled on his congregation. But when Margaret asked him what he had thought of the sermon, he had to confess that he had not heard it. "I was thinking of the little church at home," he said. "I'm glad I went, aren't you?"

"I'll not go to that church again!"

"Why not?"

"They judge you by your clothes. That was some sort of servants' gallery the usher put us in."