“And you called yourself a professional photographer when you came in here.”

“I am, but—”

“But what?”

“Nothing.”

“That is what you are. Nothing. Go back to Mr. Barnes. If he has any use for you, stay. If not, go.” The boy turned to go out, but Carter called after him, “Leave your camera here. Everything.”

Logan dropped his apparatus on the editor’s desk and went out. Carter eyed it with a look of incredulity.

“It is the twentieth century, and nothing is so sure as progress, money, and science. I wonder what this prince of fakers has to beat that combination? It would be worth knowing.”

He sat at his desk and brooded for several minutes, until his thoughts were suddenly startled by a call over the tube from Barnes. His voice was strange and full of intense feeling.

“Mr. Carter, the person—the one I know as Jesus—is here, and he wants to see you.”

There was a moment of astonishment on Carter’s part. “Send him up here.”

“Very well.” A pause, then a note in Barnes’s voice that Carter had never heard. “You will not—”

“I know how to be a gentleman when necessary,” Carter called back, and then he faced his office door, every nerve tingling in spite of his usual proud and sneering indifference.

An hour later, Barnes, down in the reporters’ room, had a sharp call from Carter. “Come up here!”

He went up at once, and the first thing he noted when he went in was Carter’s back as he bent over his desk, apparently busy over something there. As Barnes entered, Carter wheeled around.

“Sit down. Close the door first.”

It was after he returned to the editor’s desk that Barnes noted the unmistakable signs of deep agitation on Carter’s face. Well? He did not say it out loud, but every fiber of him questioned the editor.

Carter spoke with evident effort. “The person is—well, interesting, and—”

“He is more than interesting, Mr. Carter. He is Jesus.”

Carter pulled himself together. “He is just an unusually intelligent, well-bred, well-informed man. What you say, Barnes, is simply absurd. Do you know why he came to see me?”

“No.”

“He left this with me.” Carter held up an ordinary typewritten manuscript. “He asked me to read it.”

“Will you?”

Carter dropped the paper on his desk. “I have the usual amount of curiosity. I shall read it.”

“But what did you talk about?”

“Well, he spoke of seeing me in the gallery yesterday, and then he, well . . .” Carter laughed a little unnaturally. “He talked to me about my spiritual life. Think of that, Barnes. Who in Raymond has ever talked to me about my spiritual life? The parson has never even mentioned it to me.”

“You don’t give them an opportunity.”

“And I didn’t give this person an opportunity, either, but first thing I knew, we were deep in it. I will say for him that he first asked if I had the time.”