On Maxwell Dickson’s counter lay an unbound book, very clean and very new. Helen took it up as she put the volumes which she brought with her into the librarian’s dingy hands. It was still damp from the press; no one had opened it before. The subject attracted her; it was one of the publications of the New Crusade. The social science--how to make men better, nobler, purer: how to attack in their own camp the declared evils of our land and time--was the subject of this book; the science of that great discontent which has seized upon so many able minds, happily, now--the science of aggression against all vileness, all pollution. This was the subject of the book, and the name of it kindled a little the dim light in the eyes of Helen. She turned it over rapidly to glean what she could of its contents. Maxwell Dickson in vain tries to make his young customer hear what he is saying to her. A sudden flush has covered her face--a sudden thrill springs up through the bounding pulses which were so languid a moment before; the slight nervous start--the head lifted so swiftly--the motion of the eager fingers which hold these pages open. From some unseen hand the electric touch is given: what is the cause? Helen is reading in the new book. “The writer remembers well the arguments urged upon him once with the enthusiastic faith of youth, by one who desired a new order of chivalry vowed and dedicated to the service of God and the poor. ‘It is not well--surely it is not well to withdraw from the evils which are in us and around us. I say we are bound to do battle with them--not to stand on our defence alone, but to carry the war into the camp of the enemies. I think sometimes that the state of war must be the only good state for those who have sin natural to them as we have, and that if these words, resist and struggle, were withdrawn from our language we would be no longer human; for when we let our arms fall, our hearts fall, and weariness comes upon us, and distrust and gloom; and out of the living world we come into the narrow chamber of ourselves, and the sun sets upon us--’ It is the philosophy of a young heart; of one who has not yet travelled far from the East, and whom the vision splendid still attends upon the way; but because it is youthful and has the breath of enthusiasm in it, it is no less true.” Maxwell Dixon is impatient; he pulls Miss Buchanan’s sleeve, and with that thrill of nervous strength upon her she is compelled to withdraw those new damp pages from their office of shading her flushed cheek and moving features; but Helen is not angry; she lifts her eyes, which dazzle him with their unusual brightness, to the honest man’s stolid face. He does not know what to make of this variable visitor of his; he thinks she looked very different when she entered the shop, but he fancies it must just be one of the whims of “thae women.”