"I don't see," said Mrs. Graham, returning to her venison, "why they let those creatures go about like that, making everybody uncomfortable. They are very annoying." "Yes, very. So were the early Christians," murmured Flint, as he helped himself to the mushrooms. "I never studied church history," said Mrs. Graham, a little repressively. She felt that the conversation was bordering on blasphemy, and sought to turn it into safer channels. She begged Flint, whom, she looked upon, in spite of his denials, as alarmingly cultivated, to recommend a course of reading for the steamer, so that she might be "up" on the associations of the English lakes. "You know," she said, "I just _adore_ Wordsworth. I think 'Lucy Grey' and 'Peter Bell' are too sweet for anything, and the 'Picnic'--no, I mean the 'Excursion' is my favorite of them all. So light and cheerful; I'm glad the dear man did take a day off once in a while." Flint gravely promised a Life of Wordsworth, to be sent to the "Etruria" to-morrow, and then, bidding his companions adieu, he passed out into the night. His mood, as he strolled up the avenue, was far from complacent. He felt a contempt for himself, as the sport of every passing impression. It was not enough, it seemed, that he should have cut short a summer vacation, and come hurrying back to the city at Winifred Anstice's behest. He must vibrate to every whim about him. He had found, with inward disgust, that he was raising his elbow to shake hands with the Grahams, instead of holding his hand at the customary, self-respecting angle; and that he might be still further convicted of weak mindedness, he had a sense of being in some inexplicable fashion dominated by the vision of Nora Costello and her comrades. Not that he experienced any sudden drawing to the Salvation Army; he felt, to the core, its crudeness, its limitations, its social dangers. His reason assured him that its methods threatened socialism and anarchy. He could have demolished all General Booth's pet theories by an appeal to the simplest logical processes, but that it seemed absurd to apply logic to so crude a scheme. "Nevertheless," said conscience, "these people are striving, however blunderingly, to better the condition of the forlorn, the wicked, and the wretched. What are _you_ doing about it?" He had almost framed a defence, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was under no accusations, except from his own soul, and such thoughts and impulses as had arisen at sight of Nora Costello, moving in the world outside the social wall behind which he had intrenched himself. "I suppose," he said to himself, with a shrug, "if I were living in the Massachusetts of a hundred years ago, I should be considered in a hopeful way to conversion. Now, we have learned just how far we may indulge an emotion, without allowing it to eventuate in action."