lacid, prosperous people, not unkind, but careless,
perhaps, in their prosperity.

"He's worth any ten of them," Fanny said hotly to herself, as she sat
in her pew that, after to-morrow, would no longer be hers. "The dear
old thing. `Sex sermons.' And the race is to the young. How right he is.
Well, no one can say I'm not getting an early start."

The choir had begun the first hymn when there came down the aisle a
stranger. There was a little stir among the congregation. Visitors were
rare. He was dark and very slim--with the slimness of steel wire.
He passed down the aisle rather uncertainly. A traveling man, Fanny
thought, dropped in, as sometimes they did, to say Kaddish for a
departed father or mother. Then she changed her mind. Her quick
eye noted his walk; a peculiar walk, with a spring in it. Only one
unfamiliar with cement pavements could walk like that. The Indians must
have had that same light, muscular step. He chose an empty pew halfway
down the aisle and stumbled into it rather awkwardly. Fanny thought he
was unnecessarily ugly, even for a man. Then he looked up, and nodded
and smiled at Lee Kohn, across the aisle. His teeth were very white,
and the smile was singularly sweet. Fanny changed her mind again. Not
so bad-looking, after all. Different, anyway. And then--why, of course!
Little Clarence Heyl, come back from the West. Clarence Heyl, the
cowardy-cat.

Her mind went back to that day of the street fight. She smiled. At that
moment Clarence Heyl, who had been screwing about most shockingly, as
though searching for some one, turned and met her smile, intended for
no one, with a startlingly radiant one of his own, intended most plainly
for her. He half started forward in his pew, and then remembered, and
sat back again, but with an effect of impermanence that was ludicrous.
It had been years since he had left Winnebago. At the time of his
mother's death they had tried to reach him, and had been unable to
get in touch with him for weeks. He had been off on some mountain
expedition, hundreds of miles from railroad or telegraph. Fanny
remembered having read about him in the Winnebago Courier. He seemed
to be climbing mountains a great deal--rather difficult mountains,
evidently, from the fuss they made over it. A queer enough occupation
for a cowardy-cat. There had been a book, too. About the Rockies. She
had not read it. She rather disliked these nature books, as do most
nature lovers. She told herself