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FIDELIA

be like last night again, Alice. But I've got to go down town. I've got to see Snelgrove about our business, dear."

He clasped her arm tight. "There's nothing the matter between you and me, Alice," he denied. "There can't be."

She looked up at him, her eyes ablur. "No; there can't be, Davey," she cried. "There can't be. . . . Here's another car."

He stopped it and helped her on to it, and he watched it away with a pang of his usual feeling. But when he was walking alone to the railroad station to take a train to Chicago, he wondered where Fidelia Netley was.

Fidelia just then was at chapel. She liked chapel for the verve of many people meeting and for the singing. She was accustomed to going to church and chapel for, besides being agreeable, it helped her with people. She knew scores of hymns by heart and she sang with a clear, vibrant soprano, and without having to look at the book which she held:

"He leadeth me, He leadeth me;
By his own hand, He leadeth me.
His faithful follower I would be;
For by his hand, He leadeth me."

She repeated the Lord's prayer aloud and with perfect rhythm in her words. She liked the formal prayers, for their beauty of rhythm, almost as much as she liked the hymns.

On her way out from chapel, she met several more