At once terrible words rushed into his startled mind--"popish images," "idolatry," "confessional." He rose and clutched his package and went out. In the vestibule he saw a woman performing what he took to be a slight ablution in a sort of basin--it removed his last lingering doubt. He fled, and the door closed noisily behind him, disturbing those within.
As he walked weakly toward the river, he realized that it was not altogether emotion which had exhausted him, but partly hunger. To one who was accustomed to the damp coldness of the Saal a meal out of doors, even on such a day as this, was tolerable and he sat down on a bench near the spot where Ellen and her father had paused hand in hand to look across toward Stephen's gray house. He, too, looked at it, but the lives lived there did not come within his experience and were not to be imagined.
When his lunch was eaten, he returned to the station to wait for his train and sat holding his package of books, and watching the ever-changing throng. All he saw had a bearing upon his errand, and he tried to picture Ellen among the travelers--not Ellen in her black shawl, but Ellen in her brown coat and tight-fitting cap, her Christmas gifts in her hands, all smiles and happiness. His day in the world had brought him to no final decision; Ellen's future still waited upon his reading.
For some reason unknown to him, the train waited for a long time upon a siding outside the city, and he could look directly through an opening in a high fence into the yard of an iron mill. Opposite the opening stood a lofty shed, apparently a vast store-house for finished products, in which cranes moved like gigantic men, lifting and laying down masses of iron and loading long girders upon cars. He watched, as he sometimes watched the farmers intent upon their work, the men who manipulated the enormous machines, and the men who came and went in the yard. Simply to live and work and not to think, what happiness in such a lot! But he reproached himself sharply for desiring the glory of the moon rather than the glory of the sun which was his. He had chosen the better part, or to speak exactly, it had been chosen for him. Let him be grateful.
He entered the gate of the Kloster after dark. Grandfather had lighted the brass lamp and sat by the stove asleep. On the stove were several pots with a fragrant steam escaping from under their lids. As Amos laid down his books on the sill outside, his conscience reproached him. But his motive was, he reminded himself, excellent.