," declared her husband, glancing at Alison, who
had remained silent, with approval and by no means a concealed surprise.
"I think I know of a place where I can squeeze you in, near Professor
Bridges and Sally, on the side aisle."

"Are George and Sally here?" Eleanor exclaimed.

"Hodder," said Phil, "is converting the heathen. You couldn't have kept
George away. And it was George who made Sally stay!"

Presently they found themselves established between a rawboned young
workingman who smelled strongly of soap, whose hair was plastered tightly
against his forehead, and a young woman who leaned against the wall. The
black in which she was dressed enhanced the whiteness and weariness of
her face, and she sat gazing ahead of her, apparently unconscious of
those who surrounded her, her hands tightly folded in her lap. In their
immediate vicinity, indeed, might have been found all the variety of type
seen in the ordinary street car. And in truth there were some who seemed
scarcely to realize they were not in a public vehicle. An elaborately
dressed female in front of them, whose expansive hat brushed her
neighbours, made audible comments to a stout man with a red neck which
was set in a crease above his low collar.

"They tell me Eldon Parr's pew has a gold plate on it. I wish I knew
which it was. It ain't this one, anyway, I'll bet."

"Say, they march in in this kind of a church, don't they?" some one said
behind them.

Eleanor, with her lips tightly pressed, opened her prayer book. Alison's
lips were slightly parted as she gazed about her, across the aisle. Her
experience of the Sunday before, deep and tense as it had been, seemed as
nothing compared to this; the presence of all these people stimulated her
inexpressibly, fired her; and she felt the blood pulsing through her
body as she contrasted this gathering with the dignified, scattered
congregation she had known. She scarcely recognized the church itself
. . . She speculated on the homes from which these had come, and the
motives which had brought them.

For a second the perfume of the woman in front, mingling with other less
definable odours, almost sickened her, evoking suggestions of tawdry,
trivial, vulgar lives, fed on sensation and excitement; but the feeling
was almost immediately swept away by a renewed sense of the bigness of
the thing which she beheld,--of which, indeed, she was a part. And her
thoughts turned more definitely to the man who had brough