light of paradise on her face, and they closed the meeting in a maniac pealing of
Elmer felt himself victorious over life and king of righteousness.
But it had been only the devoted, the people who had come early and taken front seats, of whom he had been conscious in his transports. The students who had remained at the back of the church now loitered outside the door in murmurous knots, and as Elmer and his mother passed them, they stared, they even chuckled, and he was suddenly cold. . . .
It was hard to give heed to his mother's wails of joy all the way to her boarding-house.
"Now don't you dare think of getting up early to see me off on the train," she insisted. "All I have to do is just to carry my little valise across the street. You'll need your sleep, after all this stirrin' up you've had tonight—I was so proud—I've never known anybody to really wrestle with the Lord like you did. Oh, Elmy, you'll stay true? You've made your old mother so happy! All my life I've sorrowed, I've waited, I've prayed, and now I shan't ever sorrow again! Oh, you will stay true?"
He threw the last of his emotional reserve into a ringing, "You bet I will, Ma!" and kissed her good-night.
He had no emotion left with which to face walking alone, in a cold and realistic night, down a street not of shining columns but of cottages dumpy amid the bleak snow and unfriendly under the bitter stars.
His plan of saving Jim Lefferts, his vision of Jim with reverent and beatific eyes, turned into a vision of Jim with extremely irate eyes and a lot to say. With that vanishment his own glory vanished.
"Was I," he wondered, "just a plain damn' fool?
"Jim warned me they'd nab me if I lost my head.
"Now I suppose I can't ever even smoke again without going to hell."
But he wanted a smoke. Right now!
He had a smoke.
