th inexplicable intelligence the true path to humanity."

"Well, I don't know about that. Though it's very likely, very likely,"
hurriedly. McCall had no relish for argument about it. He was more
secure of his intellect in the matter of peaches than inner lights.
Cowed and awed as he could have been by no body of men, he followed
Bluhm up a dirty flight of stairs into the assemblage of Superior
Women. The office was by nature a chamber with gaudy wall-paper of
bouquets and wreaths. Viewed as an office, it was well enough, but in
the aesthetic, light of a Holy Ground of Ideas it needed sweeping.
The paper, too, hung in flaps from the damp walls: dusty files of
newspapers, an empty bird-cage, old boots, a case of medical books, a
pair of dilapidated trousers filled up one side of the room. A pot of
clove-pinks in the window struggled to drown with spicy fragrance the
odor of stale tobacco smoke. There was a hempen carpet, inch deep with
mud and dust, on the floor. Seated round an empty fireplace, on cane
chairs and in solemn circle, were about forty followers of the Inner
Light. McCall perceived Maria near the window, the dusky twilight
bringing out with fine effect her delicate, beautiful face. He turned
quickly to the others, looking for the popular type of the Advanced
Female, in loose sacque and men's trousers, with bonnet a-top, hair
cut short, sharp nose and sharper voice. She was not there. A third
of the women were Quakers, with their calm, benign faces for the
most part framed by white hair--women who, having fought successfully
against slavery, when that victory was won had taken up arms against
the oppressors of women with devout and faithful purpose. The rest
McCall declared to himself to be "rather a good-looking lot--women who
had," he guessed shrewdly, "been in lack of either enough to eat or
somebody to love in the world, and who fancied the ballot-box would
bring them an equivalent for a husband or market-money."

A little dish-faced woman in rusty black, and with whitish curls
surmounted by a faded blue velvet bonnet laid flat on top of her head,
had the floor: "Mr. Chairman--I mean Miss Chairman--the object of
our meeting this evening is, Shall marriage in the Consolidated
Republic--"

"I object!" Herr Bluhm sprang to his feet, wrapping a short mantle
like a Roman toga across his chest, and wearing a portentous frown
upon his brow, "There is business of the last meeting which is not
finished. Shall t