"Surely!"
He looked at the titles in an uncritical spirit and took them as they came. The volumes belonged to the "Thinker's Library," a somewhat poorly bound, carelessly edited series of English novels and translations of other European novels and tales. It was a curious list which he transcribed—"Bertha Garlan," "Russian Stories," "Esther Waters."
He found at last in a store, where he had to thread his way among women buying laces and handkerchiefs and table linen, a corner where books were sold. The first two volumes on his list were on hand, "Esther Waters" was not to be had, but "Evelyn Innes" was suggested by the clerk as a substitute. Then, his bundle under his arm, he walked out. Now that his business was attended to, he would satisfy his still undulled curiosity. It seemed to him that the gaze of every passer-by sought his, and he was uneasy until he realized that his glance sought the eye of every passer-by. This fact discovered, he walked on looking straight ahead and holding his shoulders stiffly.
He came at last to the street with the park in the center running from the Capitol to the river. There stood large churches, and seeing a few women enter the most imposing, he entered also. He made no excuse for himself, though he knew that his uncle would not approve; an inspection of churches seemed a legitimate part of his expedition.
When with a single astonished glance he saw that the few worshipers were kneeling, he knelt also. He had not dreamed that anywhere but in the Saal men went to pray alone. He prayed now for the Kloster and for his uncle and for Ellen—poor little Ellen whose sobs he would never forget. It seemed to him that God spoke to him and told him that it would be right to help her to her heart's desire, and he sighed happily.
Then—it may have been the tinkle of beads slipping from finger to finger, it may have been a subtle ecclesiastical odor different from the odor of the Saal—he felt a sudden misgiving. He opened his eyes slowly and looked at the woman kneeling near by, who was not so absorbed in her devotions that she did not have a startled eye for her neighbor whom she believed to be some sort of very holy man. Next he saw the stations of the cross along the wall, and then the marble altar with its tiny, gleaming lamp. Whither, oh, whither had he come?
At once terrible words rushed into his startled mind—"popish images," "idolatry," "confessional." He rose and clutched his package and went out. In the vestibule he saw a woman performing what he took to be a slight ablution in a sort of basin—it removed his last lingering doubt. He fled, and the door closed noisily behind him, disturbing those within.
As he walked weakly toward the river, he realized that it was not altogether emotion which had exhausted him, but partly hunger. To one who was accustomed to the damp coldness of the Saal a meal out of doors, even on such a day as this, was tolerable and he sat down on a bench near the spot where Ellen and her father had paused hand in hand to look across toward Stephen's gray house. He, too, looked at it, but the lives lived there did not come within his experience and were not to be imagined.
When his lunch was eaten, he returned to the station to wait for his train and sat holding his package of books, and watching the ever-changing throng. All he saw had a bearing upon his errand, and he tried to picture Ellen among the travelers—not Ellen in her black shawl, but Ellen in her brown coat and tight-fitting cap, her Christmas gifts in her hands, all smiles and happiness. His day in the world had brought him to no final decision; Ellen's future still waited upon his reading.
For some reason unknown to him, the train waited for a long time upon a siding outside the city, and he could look directly through an opening in a high fence into the yard of an iron mill. Opposite the opening stood a lofty shed, apparently a vast store-house for finished products, in which cranes moved like gigantic men, lifting and laying down masses of iron and loading long girders upon cars. He watched, as he sometimes watched the farmers intent upon their work, the men who manipulated the enormous machines, and the men who came and went in the yard. Simply to live and work and not to think, what happiness in such a lot! But he reproached himself sharply for desiring the glory of the moon rather than the glory of the sun which was his. He had chosen the better part, or to speak exactly, it had been chosen for him. Let him be grateful.