"Look here, Barker," I said, "you'd better go home now and go to bed. You are cold and tired, and this won't help matters any."
"What will?" he asked.
I made no reply. When we reached his door he asked again:
"What will?"
I shook my head and left him standing in the brilliant hall of his beautiful home, dazed and puzzled and alone.
II.
The next time I met Roland Barker he grasped my hand and said excitedly: "I have found that woman! What she said is all true. My God! what is to be done? I feel like a strong man tied hand and foot, while devilish vultures feed on the flesh of living babes before my eyes!"
"Stop, Barker," I said; "stop, and go away for a while, or you will go mad. What have you been doing? Look at your hands; they tremble like the hands of a palsied man; and your face; why, Barker, your face is haggard and set, and your hair is actually turning gray! What in the name of all that's holy have you been doing?"
"Nothing, absolutely nothing!" he exclaimed "That is the trouble! What can I do? I tell you something is wrong, Gordon, something is desperately wrong in this world. Look at that pile of stone over there: millions of dollars are built into that. It is opened once each week, aired, cleaned, and put in order for a fashionable audience dressed in silk and broadcloth. They call it a church, but it is simply a popular club house, which, unlike other club houses, hasn't the grace to pay its own taxes. They use that club house, let us say, three hours in all, each week, for what? To listen to elaborate music and fine-spun theories about another world. They are asked to, and they give money to send these same theories to nations far away, who—to put it mildly—are quite as well off without them. Then that house is closed for a week, and those who sat there really believe that they have done what is right by their fellow-men! Their natural consciences, their sense of right and justice, have been given an anaesthetic. 'The poor ye have with you always,' they are taught to believe, is not only true, but right. I tell you, Gordon, it is all perfectly damnable, and it seems to me that I cannot bear it when I remember that woman."