To clarify, my point was about the grammaticality of the phrase "prosyletizing his innocence", not about its intendent meaning of Marcel trying to prosyletize t

To clarify, my point was about the grammaticality of the phrase "prosyletizing his innocence", not about its intendent meaning of Marcel trying to prosyletize the author. I "rendered" as you say the author's sentence by replacing the word "prosyletizing" with its meaning: "Marcel spent our entire first meeting [prosyletizing] his innocence to me." --> "Marcel spent our entire first meeting [trying to convert me to his religion] his innocence to me." Which is a straightforward substitution and so much easier to justify than your version. A valid criticism could be about my use of the word "me" between "convert" and "his religion" which is extraneous. Didn't notice that though, while playing devil's advocate, did we now? Btw the rest of the author's writing is also crap, afaic.