the mind of the girl, for the
step was one whose echo had made indelible prints on her heart and whose
owner she had been many times heartsick to see.

She had hardly time to wonder what brought him at an hour long past the
usual time for making calls before he was with them.

When he had been informed by the judge of the latest chapter in the
history of the canteen outrage, Mr. Allison laughed heartily.

"What have you been voting for the last ten years, Judge," he asked.

"Not for the canteen," the older man answered warmly.

"I have, and for every other measure conducive to the best interests of
the trade--and we have voted the same ticket to a dot."

Finding the judge rather indisposed to talk just then the young man
turned to his hostess.

"I am on a quest," he said. "Tell me of some one possessed of enough
knowledge of human nature to recommend a course that will square me with
an unruly conscience and--a woman."

"My father is a legal light, ask him. He needs diversion now, I think,"
and Jean smiled at sight of his perplexed face.

"His specialty has not been 'man atoms of a great iniquity,'" said
Allison with a smile that hardly concealed his anxiety. "Tell me, what
would you do if you had been a 'man-atom,' had grown disgusted with the
mother mass and wished to completely sever your connection with it
before God and man?"

"You mean if I were a man? Well, first I would ask the Lord to forgive
me for ever having been a 'man-atom.'"

"I have been duly penitent," assented the questioner.

"Then I would buy some paper--a quantity of it--and I would write yards
and yards of resolutions stating that 'it can never be legalized without
sin.'"

"And then?"

"Then I should pray a whole lot--and pursue the even tenor of my way;
and if my conscience should assert itself in the face of all this, I
should think it too cranky a conscience to be humored."

"What about the woman?"

Jean smiled.

"Woman? Women," she said, "have notions. To save their lives they cannot
see the use in wasting paper and prayers. They would DO something.
Women--some women--believe in standing right with God and conscience
though the heavens fall."

"So do some men," said Allison, gravely.

Jean started slightly. The tone of his voice, the look of his eye,
conveyed to her the knowledge that somewhere, somehow, since she had
seen him last he had been awakened.

Involuntarily she clasped her hands and in the passing glance she