She looked in the quaint oval mirror that hung beside her door and lifted her head with a touch of pride. She had reached the street and started for the Broadway car before she suddenly remembered that Jane was “dining with a dangerous man.” She couldn't turn back to that little room tonight without new courage. Her decision was instantaneous. She couldn't surrender to the flesh and the devil by yielding to Jane. She would go to prayer-meeting! Religion had always been a very real thing in her life. Her father was a Methodist presiding elder. She would have gone to the meeting tonight in the first place but for the snow. Dr. Craddock, the new sensational pastor of the Temple, was giving a series of Wednesday-night talks that had aroused wide interest and drawn immense crowds. His theme tonight was one that promised all sorts of sensations--“The Woman of the Future.” The only trouble with the Doctor was that the substance of his discourses sometimes failed to make good the startling suggestions of his titles. No matter--she would go. She felt a sense of righteous pride infighting her way to the church through the first storm of the winter. In spite of the snow the church was crowded. The subject announced had evidently touched a vital spot in modern life. More people were thinking about “The Woman of the Future” than she had suspected. The crowd sat with eager, upturned faces. The first half-hour's prayer and song service had just begun. Mary joined in the singing of the stirring evangelistic hymns with enthusiasm. Something in their battle-cry melody caught her spirit instantly tonight and her whole being responded. In ten minutes she was a good shouting Methodist and supremely happy without knowing why. She never paused to ask. Her nature was profoundly religious and she had been born and bred in the atmosphere of revivals. Her father was an aggressive evangelist both in his character and methods of work, and she was his own daughter--a child of emotion. The individuals in the eager crowd which packed the popular church meant nothing to her personally. They had passed before her unseeing eyes Sunday after Sunday the past five years as mere shadows of an unknown world which swallowed them up the moment they reached the street. She had never seen the inside of one of their homes. Not one of them had drawn close enough to her to venture an invitation. Two of the stewards she knew personally--one a bricklayer, the other a baker on Eighth Avenue. The preacher she had met in a purely formal way as the bishop of the flock. She liked Dr. Craddock. He was known in the ministry as a live wire. He was a man of vigorous physique--just turning fifty, magnetic, eloquent and popular with the masses.