It was at the Sixteenth Street corner that he came suddenly upon Middleton. The former tonnage cleric, clean shaven as to the beard, dapper and well fed, was standing in a dark doorway, fingering his mustaches and apparently waiting for some one. “Hello, Philly!” he called. “Little off your beat down here,--what?” With no definite reason for so doing, Philip began to bristle inwardly. Though he had worked with Middleton and roomed with him, he had never been quite able to conquer an ingrained aversion to the man. “It is a public street, isn’t it?” he suggested. “That is the trouble with it; it is too public for a truly good young man like yourself. Or perhaps you are not so truly good as you used to be. How about it?” With the instinctive antagonism to prompt it, there was a sharp reply on the end of Philip’s tongue. But he suppressed it. “I like to ramble around a little now and then in the evenings,” he substituted; and Middleton laughed. “You don’t mean to say that you’ve become human enough to do a little ‘chasing’ for yourself?” Philip did not affect to misunderstand. With the curious inner voice whispering that this was the proper time to answer a fool according to his folly, he said mildly: “Weren’t you continually setting me the example last year?” The dapper one laughed again. “You might go so far as to say that I am still setting it. I don’t mind telling you that right now I’m camping on the trail of one of the choicest little bits of womaninity you ever laid eyes on. If she shows up, I shall promptly shoo you away.” Philip’s lip curled. “One of the Corinthians?” he queried. “Not on your sweet life; nothing like it. She’s a black-eyed, black-haired little darling, all frost on the outside and fire on the inside--works in a millinery shop and comes home about this time every evening. She’s a little offish yet, but she’ll get over that pretty soon.” While one might count ten, the flaring gas street-lights turned darkly red for Middleton’s listener. But his voice was low and quite controlled when he said, “Of course you know her name?” “Yep; she never would tell me, but I got it from one of the girls she works with. It’s a boy’s name--Jean.”