th in her eyes, "did she not
die behind the bars? To be shut up in a convent with that grief at her
heart!"

"Bars there were none," said the Father gently. "She left her vocation
to me, and I decided for her to become a Sister of Mercy. I
have little sympathy," with a shrug half argumentative, half
deprecatory--"but little sympathy with the conventual system for
spirits like hers. She would have wasted and worn away in the offices
of prayer. She needed _action_. And she had the full of it in her
calling. She went from bedside to bedside of the sick and dying--here
a child in a fever; there a widow-woman in the last stages of
consumption--night after night, and day after day, with no rest, no
thought of herself."

"Oh, I have seen her," I could not help interposing, "in a city car. A
shrouded figure that was conspicuous even in her serge dress. She read
a book of _Hours_ all the time, but I caught one glimpse of her eyes:
they were very brilliant."

"Yes," sighed the Father, "it was an unnatural brightness. I was
called away to Montreal, or I should never have permitted the
sacrifice. She went where-ever the worst cases were of contagion and
poverty, and she would have none to relieve her at her post. So, when
I returned after three months' absence, I was shocked at the change:
she was dying of their family disease. 'It is better, so,' she said,
'dear Father. It was only the bullet that saved Harry from it, and it
would have been sure to come to me at last, after some opera or
ball.' She died last winter--so patient and pure, and such a saintly
sufferer!"

The Father wiped his eyes. Why should I think of Bessie? Why should
the Sister's veiled figure and pale ardent face rise before me as if
in warning?

Of just such overwhelming sacrifice was my darling capable were her
life's purpose wrecked. Something there was in the portrait of the
sweet singleness, the noble scorn of self, the devotion unthinking,
uncalculating, which I knew lay hidden in her soul.

The Father warmed into other themes, all in the same key of mother
Church. I listened dreamily, and to my own thoughts as well.

He pictured the priest's life of poverty, renunciation, leaving the
world of men, the polish and refinement of scholars, to take the
confidences and bear the burdens of grimy poverty and ignorance.
Surely, I thought, we do wrong to shut such men out of our sympathies,
to label them "Dangerous." Why should we turn the cold shoulder? a