"Well, he's a Jew and a free thinker and an anarchist and a human fire-brand—and the most all around fine character I've ever known! Anyway, he took an interest in me as I floundered about—he seems to think he can make something out of me." His mingled pride and humility was indescribably boyish and lovable to Judith. He sounded a new note, quite free from the cant with which, in her mind, he had never been quite disassociated.
"And are you happier now?" she asked when he paused.
"Much," he said thoughtfully. "I was successful at St. Viateur's and I was popular, and I thought I was doing good work. But I'm happier now—really I am—consciously happy, I mean. In a way I'm a failure, of course, and I've lost most of my old friends, but the newer ones seem truer—and what I've lost in the respect of others, I've gained in the respect of myself. Yes, I'm happier now."
"But what are you doing?"
"Well, we've established a sort of peoples' church, with meetings in one of the downtown theatres. It's for those who haven't any creed, or even much faith. We seem to have some kind of a hold. There's rarely an empty seat."
"Do you preach?"
"Once in a while. But I wouldn't call it preaching. I've come to dislike that word. This is something different. You can't preach, you know, to our kind of people. That's what made lots of them leave their churches. Jesus never preached. But oh, Judith—" His eyes flashed and she thought his enthusiasm in keeping with his red tie. He had always been so reserved, hitherto. "I've never experienced anything like talking to those people. When I was in the pulpit at St. Viateur's, with all you comfortable, smug, well-fed, contented people before me, talking to you seemed only a form, and what I said, merely a formula. You didn't care what I said, and I didn't—it was how I said it. But now—I tell you there's an intoxication in talking to people who've come because they get something, not because they ought to, or because it's the thing. It's no wonder that the biggest men in the land are glad to appear on our stage."
"Do you do any welfare work?" Judith found his enthusiasm infectious.
"In a way—mostly getting people jobs and things like that. We're not very well organised yet, but we're working all the time."
"I suppose—you lack money?"