"Decidedly," he said to himself, "slumming is not my vocation. If I were drafted into the Salvation Army, I should plead to be permitted to join the open-air brigade. My sympathy with the poor in general, and drunkards in particular, is in inverse proportion to the nearness. Poor Brady! I wonder how he will endure being unequally yoked together with a believer. Suppose Nora Costello refuses him. No, he is safe enough, if it is being safe to have her return his love. I saw her look up as we came in, and though she never glanced in our direction again till the cry of 'Fire!' came, I saw her look of appeal then, and his response. Oh, there is no doubt about her accepting him; but the question is, not how does she feel now, but how will she feel a year or two years from now? As I grow older, I grow more conservative on these things. There is such an amount of wear and tear in the ordinary strain of married life that I hate to see cruel and unusual ones added. If Winifred Anstice should ever or could ever-- There, I will not allow myself even to think about it, for it would be so much harder to give it up afterward if I am compelled to, and, after all, what chance is there that a girl like Winifred would be willing to spend her whole life with a man whose nature and character are so different from hers!" Flint had been walking rapidly, and his musings had so filled his mind that he saw with surprise that he had reached the corner where the Sixth Avenue elevated and surface cars curve together for their straight-away race to the Park at the end of the course. He was conscious of a certain added rush of spirits at finding himself once more on the edge of a familiar world,--a world where the sin was at least conventionalized and the misery went about well dressed. Already the scene at the slum post had taken on in his mind a distance which enabled him to regard it humorously, and he amused himself in rehearsing the scene as he would set it forth to Brooke when he reached "The Chancellor." As he turned a corner, he noticed just in front of him in the side street leading toward Fifth Avenue a young woman carrying a paper parcel, and looking up a little nervously at one number after another. She wore a Canada seal jacket, and a wide felt hat topped with nodding plumes which made a large effect for the investment. Over the jacket hung a gilt chain holding a coin purse, the latest fad of the fashionable world. As Flint's footsteps quickened behind her, she turned her head a little timorously. At last she stopped, and as he caught up with her she began, "Could you tell me--" Then she stopped short. "Miss Marsden!" exclaimed Flint, in amazement. "What in the world brings you here?" "To see New York," the girl began a little flippantly, but ended more tremulously, "and to see you." "But where are you staying?"