t
in the same instant, with that soft lift and touch which makes a
woman's gown seem sewed with vowels and sibilants, they all arose
and came tapping across the bare floor. At their head marched a
woman with such a bright bonnet, and such a tinkle of ornaments on
her gown that at first sight she quite looked like a lamp. It was
she whom St. George approached.

"I beg your pardon, madame," he said, "is this the Readers' Guild?"

There was nothing in St. George's grave face and deferential
stooping of shoulders to betray how his heart was beating or what a
bound it gave at her amazing reply.

"Ah," she said, "how do you do?"--and her manner had that violent
absent-mindedness which almost always proves that its possessor has
trained a large family of children--"I am so glad that you can be
with us to-day. I am Mrs. Manners--forgive me," she besought with
perfectly self-possessed distractedness, "I'm afraid that I've
forgotten your name."

"My name is St. George," he answered as well as he could for virtual
speechlessness.

The other members of the Guild were issuing from the room, and Mrs.
Manners turned. She had a fashion of smiling enchantingly, as if to
compensate her total lack of attention.

"Ladies," she said, "this is Mr. St. George, at last."

Then she went through their names to him, and St. George bowed and
caught at the flying end of the name of the woman nearest him, and
muttered to them all. The one nearest was a Miss Bella Bliss Utter,
a little brown nut of a woman with bead eyes.

"Ah, Mr. St. George," said Miss Utter rapidly, "it has been a
wonderful meeting. I wish you might have been with us. Fortunately
for us you are just in time for our third floor council."

It had been said of St. George that when he was writing on space and
was in need, buildings fell down before him to give him two columns
on the first page; but any architectural manoeuvre could not have
amazed him as did this. And too, though there had been occasions
when silence or an evasion would have meant bread to him, the
temptation to both was never so strong as at that moment. It cost
St. George an effort, which he was afterward glad to remember having
made, to turn to Mrs. Manners, who had that air of appointing
committees and announcing the programme by which we always recognize
a leader, and try to explain.

"I am afraid," St. George said as they reached the stairs, "that you
have mistaken me, Mrs. Manners. I am not--"