What, as a matter of fact, she had been doing was to listen to slim little Luigi Malatesta and fat little Morris Binderwitz respectively attacking and defending the proposition that Abraham Lincoln was a greater American than George Washington; but what she thought she had been doing was assisting in raising the lower half of society. Under this impression, her fine brown eyes shone with the consciousness of moral rectitude, her mouth was even more than usually firm, and her head even more than usually like some delicate cameo. "One thing at a time, please," she imperturbably answered. "First, no taxicab. It isn't far to Second Avenue, which is quiet enough, and I want to walk for a few blocks." She took the arm that he grimly offered, and he began to break his way through the noisy crowd under the flaring gasoline lamps of the push-carts. Coherent conversation was at first impossible, but Dyker felt a glow of pride as, with her fingers closed in tight trust upon him, he shouldered a passage for her, and Marian herself was not insusceptible to the thrill inherent in the situation. Nevertheless, the girl, as soon as they had turned northward, reverted to her former attitude; and the man, knowing well that all this meant that she was still determined upon a course necessarily delaying his wooing and perhaps resulting in his discovery, frankly resumed his opposition. He did more and worse: he swept aside all his method of silence, all his plans of conquest through non-resistance. "Now," he said, continuing their interrupted talk, "I should really like to know what you, of all people in the world, were doing on Rivington Street." "I was there," she announced serenely, "because I have made up my mind that it is I, of all people in the world, who ought to be there." "Marian,"--he almost stopped as he said it--"are you really in earnest about this fancy? Do you honestly mean that you are seriously considering any such chimerical course?" He had, naturally, chosen precisely the tone that, were any additional incentive required, would have compelled her to resolution. Her mind, as it chanced, was, however, made up, and what he now said served only to turn her toward that feminine logic which assumes as done that which is determined. "I am past consideration," she said. "I have already virtually begun." "Marian! You're joking." "I am simply stating a fact. Why do you suppose I have been staying in town this summer? I begin my real work at the settlement with the first of next week." Her classmates in Rivington Street, could they have heard this, would have been pleased, but they would also have been surprised. Nevertheless, she at once mentally decided to make good her declaration. In the darkness Dyker bit the lip that, under his short, crisp mustache, trembled with vexation. "You really mean that?" She bowed a brief assent. "Then what, if you please, do you propose to do when you get there?"