his place at Schoenheim, and advised him to repent and seek the direction of the Holy Spirit before he should ever attempt another pastorate.
Elmer sat in his room flaming with his evangelistic triumph. He was so sincere about it that not for minutes did he reflect that Frank would no longer be an obstacle to his relations with Lulu Bains.
A score of times before March, in her own house, in an abandoned log barn, at the church, Elmer contrived to have meetings with Lulu. But he wearied of her trusting babble. Even her admiration, since she always gushed the same things in the same way, began to irritate him. Her love-making was equally unimaginative. She always kissed and expected to be kissed in the same way. Even before March he had had enough, but she was so completely devoted to him that he wondered if he might not have to give up the Schoenheim church to get rid of her.
He felt injured.
Nobody could ever say he was unkind to girls or despised 'em, the way Jim Lefferts used to. He'd taught Lulu an awful lot; got her over her hick ideas; showed her how a person could be religious and still have a good time, if you just looked at it right and saw that while you ought to teach the highest ideals, nobody could be expected to always and exactly live up to 'em every day. Especially when you were young. And hadn't he given her a bracelet that cost five good bucks?
But she was such a darned fool. Never could understand that after a certain point a man wanted to quit love-making and plan his next Sunday's sermon or bone up on his confounded Greek. Practically, he felt resentfully, she'd deceived him. Here he'd thought that she was a nice, safe, unemotional little thing, whom it might be pleasant to tease but who'd let him alone when he had more serious matters to attend to, and then she'd turned out passionate. She wanted to go on being kissed and kissed and kissed when he was sick of it. Her lips were always creeping around, touching his hand or his cheek when he wanted to talk.
She sent him whining little notes at Mizpah. Suppose some-
