per scholar--in all these
matters--than I am. How could I possibly hope to influence him by my
poor arguments? I don't know even the alphabet of the language he thinks
in--on these subjects, I mean."

"Of course you don't!" interposed the girl, with a confidence which the
other, for all his meekness, rather winced under. "That wasn't what
I meant at all. We don't want arguments from our friends: we want
sympathies, sensibilities, emotional bonds. The right person's silence
is worth more for companionship than the wisest talk in the world from
anybody else. It isn't your mind that is needed here, or what you know;
it is your heart, and what you feel. You are full of poetry, of ideals,
of generous, unselfish impulses. You see the human, the warm-blooded
side of things. THAT is what is really valuable. THAT is how you can
help!"

"You overestimate me sadly," protested Theron, though with considerable
tolerance for her error in his tone. "But you ought to tell me something
about this Dr. Ledsmar. He spoke of being an old friend of the pr--of
Father Forbes."

"Oh, yes, they've always known each other; that is, for many years. They
were professors together in a college once, heaven only knows how long
ago. Then they separated, I fancy they quarrelled, too, before they
parted. The doctor came here, where some relative had left him the
place he lives in. Then in time the Bishop chanced to send Father Forbes
here--that was about three years ago,--and the two men after a while
renewed their old relations. They dine together; that is the doctor's
stronghold. He knows more about eating than any other man alive, I
believe. He studies it as you would study a language. He has taught
old Maggie, at the pastorate there, to cook like the mother of all
the Delmonicos. And while they sit and stuff themselves, or loll about
afterward like gorged snakes, they think it is smart to laugh at all the
sweet and beautiful things in life, and to sneer at people who believe
in ideals, and to talk about mankind being merely a fortuitous product
of fermentation, and twaddle of that sort. It makes me sick!"

"I can readily see," said Theron, with sympathy, "how such a cold,
material, and infidel influence as that must shock and revolt an
essentially religious temperament like yours."

Miss Madden looked up at him. They had turned into the main street, and
there was light enough for him to detect something startlingly like a
grin on her beautiful