. I had never met a man like him. I suppose that was why, in
spite of my twenty-four years, I had not married. I liked him; I had to
confess it to myself. And my like for him was founded on things
beyond intellect and argument. Regardless of his bulging muscles and
prize-fighter's throat, he impressed me as an ingenuous boy. I felt
that under the guise of an intellectual swashbuckler was a delicate and
sensitive spirit. I sensed this, in ways I knew not, save that they were
my woman's intuitions.

There was something in that clarion-call of his that went to my heart.
It still rang in my ears, and I felt that I should like to hear it
again--and to see again that glint of laughter in his eyes that belied
the impassioned seriousness of his face. And there were further reaches
of vague and indeterminate feelings that stirred in me. I almost loved
him then, though I am confident, had I never seen him again, that the
vague feelings would have passed away and that I should easily have
forgotten him.

But I was not destined never to see him again. My father's new-born
interest in sociology and the dinner parties he gave would not permit.
Father was not a sociologist. His marriage with my mother had been very
happy, and in the researches of his own science, physics, he had been
very happy. But when mother died, his own work could not fill the
emptiness. At first, in a mild way, he had dabbled in philosophy; then,
becoming interested, he had drifted on into economics and sociology. He
had a strong sense of justice, and he soon became fired with a passion
to redress wrong. It was with gratitude that I hailed these signs of a
new interest in life, though I little dreamed what the outcome would
be. With the enthusiasm of a boy he plunged excitedly into these new
pursuits, regardless of whither they led him.

He had been used always to the laboratory, and so it was that he turned
the dining room into a sociological laboratory. Here came to dinner
all sorts and conditions of men,--scientists, politicians, bankers,
merchants, professors, labor leaders, socialists, and anarchists. He
stirred them to discussion, and analyzed their thoughts of life and
society.

He had met Ernest shortly prior to the "preacher's night." And after the
guests were gone, I learned how he had met him, passing down a street at
night and stopping to listen to a man on a soap-box who was addressing
a crowd of workingmen. The man on the box was Ernest. Not th