It had begun to rain heavily and he had no umbrella. He remembered the cathedral into which he had gone by mistake, and wondering at his earlier feeling of wickedness, he decided to take refuge there from the rain. He felt an intense curiosity; Roman Catholic beliefs were often mentioned in the books which he read. He hurried his steps, and when he reached the church he went in and sat down panting.
At first he experienced only a dull peace. His body was tired, his mind ceased to operate and the mere freedom from thought was comfortable. Gradually a deeper quiet came upon him, induced by the silence and the dim conception of ageless traditions which he had unconsciously gathered. Here as in the Kloster men had found peace; they had crept away and had taken vows and hidden themselves forever from the temptations of the mad world.
He saw a slender youth in a long, loose garment enter the church from behind the altar and kneel down. As he knelt he read from a little book, and sometimes he made a graceful, rapid motion with his hand across forehead and breast. Amos watched hungrily and knelt also, crouching almost to the floor. The young man had a happy face—would that he had courage to ask the nature and the effect of his orisons! He would do anything, follow any one.
But the young priest, having finished his devotions, rose, crossed himself, and went the way he had come. He had to Amos's eyes suddenly a complacent air which produced a reaction. The fierce hunger for life came back; he rose and went out, letting the door slam. He would buy more books. And—poor Amos!—he would do worse than that; he would learn something of the world at first hand. There were theaters and moving-picture houses—to him nothing human was hereafter to be foreign.
The rain had ceased, and again for a brief space the mist descended, not now in a thick blanket, but in ragged masses, and a wind blew from the river. The deeper chill of evening cooled the air, and as pedestrians took on a livelier pace, he moved more briskly with them. At the corner of the square he stood still and watched the street-cars moving on the weblike tracks, and the bright lights of the automobiles weaving a pattern round them, and the larger circles of human beings perpetually revolving. The group of Salvation Army workers stood where they had stood months before, singing shrilly, with an accompaniment of tambourine music, an old and sentimental religious song set to a popular secular air. Their leader looked about with the same solemnity, the same canine determination to snatch as many souls as possible from eternal death. Amos looked and listened unmoved.
Then suddenly, as though by this dullness he had opened finally a gateway for the powers of darkness, there rose beside him a representative of that evil which he believed to be the chief evil of the world. A short, heavy woman whose black eyes sparkled behind a figured veil came up to him, so close that her shoulder touched his arm. He took an involuntary step, then he looked down.
"You're all alone?" asked a flat voice.
"Yes."
"So am I, but I'm always glad for company. Perhaps you would come with me?"
"Where?"