"Pray, pray do not mention it," cried Mrs. Manners, shaking her
little lamp-shade of a hat at him, "we make every allowance, and I
am sure that none will be necessary."

"But I am with the _Evening Sentinel_," St. George persisted, "I am
afraid that--"

"As if one's profession made any difference!" cried Mrs. Manners
warmly. "No, indeed, I perfectly understand. We all understand," she
assured him, going over some papers in one hand and preparing to
mount the stairs. "Indeed, we appreciate it," she murmured, "do we
not, Miss Utter?"

The little brown nut seemed to crack in a capacious smile.

"Indeed, indeed!" she said fervently, accenting her emphasis by
briefly-closed eyes.

"Hymn books. Now, have we hymn books enough?" plaintively broke in
Mrs. Manners. "I declare, those new hymn books don't seem to have
the spirit of the old ones, no matter what _any one_ says," she
informed St. George earnestly as they reached an open door. In the
next moment he stood aside and the Readers' Guild filed past him. He
followed them. This was pleasantly like magic.

They entered a large chamber carpeted and walled in the garish
flowers which many boards of directors suppose will joy the
cheerless breast. There were present a dozen women inmates,--sullen,
weary-looking beings who seemed to have made abject resignation
their latest vice. They turned their lustreless eyes upon the
visitors, and a portly woman in a red waist with a little American
flag in a buttonhole issued to them a nasal command to rise. They
got to their feet with a starched noise, like dead leaves blowing,
and St. George eagerly scanned their faces. There were women of
several nationalities, though they all looked raceless in the ugly
uniforms which those same boards of directors consider _de rigueur_
for the soul that is to be won back to the normal. A little negress,
with a spirit that soared free of boards of directors, had tried to
tie her closely-clipped wool with bits of coloured string; an
Italian woman had a geranium over her ear; and at the end of the
last row of chairs, towering above the others, was a creature of a
kind of challenging, unforgetable beauty whom, with a thrill of
certainty, St. George realized to be her whom he had come to see.
So strong was his conviction that, as he afterward recalled, he even
asked no question concerning her. She looked as manifestly not one
of the canaille of incorrigibles as, in her place, Lucrezia Borgia
would h