"Oh you man!" replied his wife as if man were a word of reproach. "The church committee is to be here this afternoon to formulate its report on vice conditions."

"Oh, that!" Mr. Randall chuckled. "Yes, I had forgotten, but anyhow I made it, you see. How's Mary?"

"Very well--" Mrs. Randall broke off suddenly. There was a troubled look in her eyes. Then she added lightly almost to herself: "What a queer child!"

"Queer?"

"Yes, Luke, queer," returned Mrs. Randall. Again that troubled look.

"Luke, dear, I want to make a confession. I don't understand Mary. After your brother Henry died, when we insisted that Mary come and live with us, it seemed wicked to leave her in that great house alone--and we have no children. Now, there are times I am almost sorry we did it. It isn't that I want to criticise Mary"--noticing her husband's look of surprise--"I know she loves us both and yet--well, I have the feeling that we don't really know her. The intimacy I had longed for hasn't developed. She seems to live a part of her time in another world than ours." She broke off again, laughing nervously. "Do you know," she said, "I sometimes have the feeling that Mary lives a sort of double life--nothing evil, you know--but uncanny. She's not unkind nor lacking in affection for either of us, but often when we are together it seems to me that her mind is miles away."

"Queer, eh?" said Mr. Randall, sympathetically. "Well, her father was like that."

"It's not strange if she is like her father," charged Mrs. Randall. "He brought her up like a boy. After her mother died she was more like a chum to him than a daughter."

Lucas Randall became meditative.

"The church work, now," he asked, "does she seem interested?"

"At first I think she was. I took her on some of my regular poor people calls. She seemed interested--too interested. Why, one day I lost her in a tenement on Kosciusko street. I had to come home without her, half wild with anxiety. She rushed in an hour later and when I questioned her as to where she had been she replied that she had found a poor Scotch family and had been so interested that she had forgotten me. 'Forgotten'--that's the very word she used. She said she had been 'seeking the causes of poverty.' I told her poverty came from people being poor, but that did not seem to satisfy her. She asked me why they were poor. I answered that often it was because they were shiftless. 'Not always,' she replied, 'these Scotch people, aunt, dear, were strangely like you and me.' She spoke as if I were the one who did not understand."

"And since then?"

"Well, she has seemed to prefer going alone." Mrs. Randall paused on the verge of a new confession. "Luke, dear," she went on hurriedly, "Mary goes into sections of the city you have warned me not to visit!"

"Not the Levee?"

"Just that."

"Good Lord," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Randall, "surely she doesn't go alone?"

"Yes, except for her maid."

"That girl she took from the Refuge?"

"Anna."

"Where is Mary now?"

"In her room."

"She'll come down to the committee meeting, I suppose?"

"I asked her and she replied that of course she would come."

"Has she been out today, Lucy?"

"Nearly all day."

"Calls, I suppose."

"No, she's been attending the hearings of the vice commission."

"In G.o.d's name, why?" Mr. Randall was really disturbed.

"I asked her that very question. She replied that the proceedings interested her."

"Heavens!" Mr. Randall paced the room. "'Interested' her! A girl with an income she can't possibly spend, a girl who might have anything, do anything, go anywhere, marry any man--"

He broke off suddenly. "Lucy," he demanded, "is there any man Mary might care for? That good looking young curate, for instance?"

Mrs. Randall shook her head emphatically. "No, Luke," she said. "If you were to ask me to name the two things Mary never gives a thought to I'd say men and matrimony. And that's another thing about her I cannot fathom."

Further confidences were cut short by the entrance of the butler announcing the Rev. Thomas Brattle, a clergyman of sixty with an old fashioned flowing white beard, small white hands and shiny gold-bowed spectacles, and Marvin Lattimer, a business man with a turn for religious activities. Desultory conversation followed broken by the entrance of Mrs. Sumnet-Ives, a well preserved woman of forty and a social power, and Miss Emma Laforth, slender, dark, intelligent looking and gifted with a political ac.u.men that had given her an una.s.sailable position in women's club circles. They were escorted by Grove Evans, plump, wealthy, well born, mildly interested in reform because reform was the proper thing, and Wyat Carp, a lawyer with literary tendencies.

Greetings and small talk; then Lucas Randall led the way to the library.

There the Rev. Mr. Brattle, clearing his throat in an official manner, established himself before a priceless seventeenth century table of carved mahogany.

"The meeting will come to order," he announced.

A circle of chairs had been drawn up before the table. The committee members occupied them with a subdued rustle of garments. The Rev. Mr.

Brattle watched the circle benignly, waiting for a moment of total silence. When he spoke his voice was smooth, finely modulated, pitched in the right key. His manner, in fact, was perfect. Indeed, in the s.p.a.cious luxury of Lucas Randall's fine library no one could have appeared to better advantage.

"Dear friends," he said, beaming about him, "we are gathered here, as you know, to formulate the report of our investigation into vice conditions.

You have labored long and faithfully. Now the time has come to put forth the fruit of your labors in a form at once concrete and illuminating."

He paused, then continued:

"The problem we are approaching is world-old. Mankind has struggled with it intermittently since civilization began. Apparently we have made no progress. The twentieth century, in fact, with its terrific congestion in cities, its vast consumption of nervous energy and its universal commercialism, has complicated our problem. But with these new complications have come new means for warring against the evil.

Intelligence on the subject is more general. Fine minds everywhere are addressing themselves to the riddle. Thus it seems that humanity is at last coming to grips with the traffic in women. Who knows but that out of this little gathering may not be evolved some theory which, injected into the circulation of modern life, shall immunize us against this social malady."

There was subdued applause.

"As my time has been somewhat occupied," the clergyman went on, "I have asked Mr. Carp to employ his well known literary gift in formulating our report. Let me add that I have read our brother's resume of our investigations and endorse it fully as to the facts found."

Meanwhile Wyat Carp, with his best poet's air, had arisen and bowed to the little circle. He laid a terrifying number of ma.n.u.script sheets on the table and polished his gla.s.ses with his silk handkerchief. His was the subdued manner of a surgeon about to perform an operation and, it must be confessed, his audience felt some of the sensations of the patient.

"My friends," began Wyat Carp, "in putting before you what I trust you may see fit to adopt as our united report I am naturally moved by a feeling of delicacy--"

He paused, for directly behind the little circle of hearers the heavy curtains had been pushed aside, and a girl stood framed there against the dull red of the draperies. She was rather above medium height, with a figure rounded by exercise, a face oval and lighted by deep blue eyes underneath ma.s.ses of burnished, coppery hair. Her personality seemed to fill the room. She breathed wholesomeness, vigor, sincerity and purpose.

As Lucas Randall half started from his chair the girl put out her hand and checked him.

"No, Uncle Luke," she said, "don't disturb yourself. I've been standing just outside the door for several minutes waiting for a moment to slip in quietly."

She bowed to them all, and seated herself near the window overlooking the boulevard.

"Just go on with the report, Mr. Carp," she said, "I a.s.sure you I am most eager to hear it."

Wyat Carp coughed gently and picked up his ma.n.u.script.