As he tramped back to Babylon that evening, Elmer did not enjoy his deliverance so much as he had expected. But he worked manfully at recalling Lulu's repetitious chatter, her humorless ignorance, her pawing, her unambitious rusticity, and all that he had escaped.
. . . To have her around—gumming his life—never could jolly the congregation and help him—and suppose he were in a big town with a swell church— Gee! Maybe he wasn't glad to be out of it! Besides! Really better for her. She and Floyd much better suited . . .
He knew that Dean Trosper's one sin was reading till late, and he came bursting into the dean's house at the scandalous hour of eleven. In the last mile he had heroically put by his exhilaration; he had thrown himself into the state of a betrayed and desolate young man so successfully that he had made himself believe it.
"Oh, how wise you were about women, Dean!" he lamented. "A terrible thing has happened! Her father and I have just found my girl in the arms of another man—a regular roué down there. I can never go back, not even for Easter service. And her father agrees with me. . . . You can ask him!"
"Well, I am most awfully sorry to hear this, Brother Gantry. I didn't know you could feel so deeply. Shall we kneel in prayer, and ask the Lord to comfort you? I'll send Brother Shallard down there for the Easter service—he knows the field."
On his knees, Elmer told the Lord that he had been dealt with as no man before or since. The dean approved his agonies very much.
"There, there, my boy. The Lord will lighten your burden in his own good time. Perhaps this will be a blessing in disguise—you're lucky to get rid of such a woman, and this will
