hey lack a civility of manner which is pretty
sure to exist in a city-bred person."

"If the country is so bad, why send any more unregenerates into it?"

"How do you know that anybody is always to be unregenerate? But I
wouldn't send thieves and imbeciles. I would select children of some
capacity, whose circumstances are against them where they are, and I am
sure they would make better material than a good deal of the young
generation in country villages now. This is what I mean by a mission for
the country. We have been bending all our efforts to the reformation of
the cities. What we need to go at now is the reforming of the country."

"You have taken a big contract," said Philip, smiling at her enthusiasm.
"Don't you intend to go on with medicine?"

"Certainly. At least far enough to be of some use in breaking up
people's ignorance about their own bodies. Half the physical as well as
moral misery comes from ignorance. Didn't I always tell you that I want
to know? A good many of my associates pretend to be agnostics, neither
believe or disbelieve in anything. The further I go the more I am
convinced that there is a positive basis for things. They talk about the
religion of humanity. I tell you, Philip, that humanity is pretty poor
stuff to build a religion on."

The talk was wandering far away from what was in Philip's mind, and
presently Celia perceived his want of interest.

"There, that is enough about myself. I want to know all about you, your
visit to Rivervale, how the publishing house suits you, how the story is
growing."

And Philip talked about himself, and the rumors in Wall Street, and Mr.
Ault and his offer, and at last about the Mavicks--he could not help
that--until he felt that Celia was what she had always been to him, and
when he went away he held her hand and said what a dear, sweet friend she
was.

And when he had gone, Celia sat a long time by the window, not seeing
much of the hot street into which she looked, until there were tears in
her eyes.

XXIV

There was one man in New York who thoroughly enjoyed the summer. Murad
Ault was, as we say of a man who is free to indulge his natural powers,
in his element. There are ingenious people who think that if the
ordering of nature had been left to them, they could maintain moral
conditions, or at least restore a disturbed equilibrium, without
violence, without calling in the aid of cyclones and of uncontrollable
electric displays, in