The praise stirred her pulses with pleasure. She wondered if she might not become a Sister of Charity and spend her life in ministering to others, and when a ragged boot-black in the street begged for a dime she gave him the money she had saved for a pair of gloves, and glorified the sacrifice by the smile of a Saint Elizabeth. She felt that she would like to give some one the coat from her back, and, as she passed in and out of the crowd around her, her heart stirred in imaginative sympathy for humanity. That vital recognition of the fellowship of man which is as transient as it is inspiring, uplifted her. She wished that some one from the crowd would single her out, saying, "I am wretched, comfort me!" or, "I am starving, feed me!" But no one did so. They looked at her with indifferent eyes, and her impulses recoiled upon themselves. At that moment she felt capable of complete self-abnegation in the cause of mankind, and even commonplace goodness possessed an attraction. But she realized that the desire to sacrifice is short-lived, and that, after all, it is easier to lay down one's life for the human race than to endure the idiosyncrasies of its atoms. To us who adopt the proprieties as a profession and wear respectability for a mantle, unauthorized impulses in any form are to be contemned, and Mariana, flushed with generous desires, was as unacceptable as Mariana submerged in self. After paying a couple of calls the girl's spirit of altruism evaporated. It was warm and close, and the sun made her head ache, while the fatigue from the unusual exercise produced a fit of ill-humor. She wondered why she had left her room, and then looked at her soiled gloves and regretted her encounter with the boot-black. The recollection of the pot of primroses and the week's car-fare caused her even more annoyance. A block from The Gotham she ran upon Jerome Ardly, and her irritation vanished. "Hello!" he ejaculated, "you are as white as a sheet. Too much September sun. Had luncheon?" "Yes," responded Mariana; and she added, plaintively, "I am so tired. I have walked myself to death--and all for nothing." "Form of monomania?" he inquired, sympathetically. "Nothing short of arrant idiocy would take any one out for nothing on a day like this." Mariana looked at him and laughed. "I have been paying calls," she said. "I went to see Mrs. Simpson and she told me all about the rights of women. It was very instructive." "If they resemble the rights of man," remarked Ardly, "they are not to be seen, heard, or felt." "Ah, but it is all the fault of men," responded Mariana; "she told me so. She said that men were the only things that kept us back." Ardly laughed. "And you?" he inquired. "I! Oh, I agreed with her! I told her that if men hindered us we would stamp them out."