The trolley car clattered, and crashed past outside, and stopped, and Alberta, looking through the bow-window, cried: “Camilla Champney! She's coming in!” While Mrs. Tillotson flushed and saw visions. Camilla was not frequent and familiar in her drawing-room. She had been there but once or twice, and then nearly a year before. When Aidee entered, Ralbeck, Mrs. Tillotson, and Berry were arguing eagerly on the subject of rituals, Camilla's thrilled and thrilling interest seeming to act like a draught on excitable coals. Mrs. Tillotson appealed to Aidee. Berry argued the softening effect of rituals; they tended to substitute non-combative forces and habits, he said, in the place of combative opinion; the Catholics were wise who substituted ecclesiasticism for theology; opinion was quarrelsome; hence followed anger and hate; a ritual represented order, therefore habit, therefore peace; it induced these qualities in character; he thought Mrs. Tillotson might compose a ritual for the Assembly. Ralbeck shouted his scorn. Mrs. Tillotson did not seem pleased with Ralbeck for his scorn. Aidee left the house with Ted, Alberta, and Camilla. Presently Ted and Alberta turned north toward Herbert Avenue and the region of large houses and broad lawns, and Aidee and Camilla walked down Franklin Street. The crowds increased as they drew nearer the business section--late afternoon crowds hurrying home. “I don't know how to say what I have to say, Miss Champney,” he said stiffly, somewhat painfully. “I thought you could say anything. That's your gift.” Camilla was radiant for a moment. “It is about the other evening. I see it differently. I see that Mr. Hennion was right.” “Oh!” For another moment she was disdainful. “Women don't want to be men's conventions.” “Conventions! Berry would say that men are sermons and women rituals.” “Mr. Berry wouldn't have said that. He _couldn't!_” She was radiant again. “Don't flatter me for coining epigrams. They're the small change of Mrs. Tillotson's drawing-room.” “But I like Alberta!” She already felt the something discordant in Aidee's mood. The increasing crowds broke the conversation. They turned to the left through the Court House Square, and passed the old jail with its barred windows and crumbling bricks. Sparrows fluttered and pecked in the wet young grass, sometimes lit on the sill of a barred window and looked into its black secrecy. “Please don't be troubled about that, Mr. Aidee, because it doesn't matter, and besides--I don't know how to ask you--but there's something I want to find out. I don't know exactly what it is. It's about 'The Inner Republic'!” She was flushed, hurried, and embarrassed now. “I thought it was different--from the other books--that is--I thought there was something in it besides what you wanted to prove.” “The book is more a confession than an argument, do you mean?” “Not more, but besides.”