"Naturally you did," said Holder, smiling. His personality, his
ascendency, his poise, suddenly felt by the other, were still more
confusing. "You thought me a narrow, complacent, fashionable priest who
had no concern as to what happened outside the walls of his church, who
stuck obstinately to dogmas and would give nothing else a hearing. Well,
you were right."

"Ah, I didn't think all that," Mr. Engel protested, and his parchment
skin actually performed the miracle of flushing. "I am not so stupid.
And once, long ago when I was young, I was going to be a minister
myself."

"What prevented you?" asked Holder, interested.

"You want me to be frank--yes, well, I couldn't take the vows." The
brown eyes of the quiet, humorous, self-contained and dried-up custodian
of the city's reading flamed up. "I felt the call," he exclaimed. "You
may not credit it to look at me now, Mr. Hodder. They said to me, 'here
is what you must swear to believe before you can make men and women
happier and more hopeful, rescue them from sin and misery!' You know
what it was."

Hodder nodded.

"It was a crime. It had nothing to do with religion. I thought it over
for a year--I couldn't. Oh, I have since been thankful. I can see now
what would have happened to me--I should have had fatty degeneration of
the soul."