ything but
their daily struggle for life. Yet she had a mother's instinct about the
danger to her daughter, and had been pleased to have her go to Father
Damon's chapel.

And, besides, he could not bring himself in that presence to seem
to rebuke Ruth Leigh. Was she not practically doing what his Lord
did--going about healing the sick, sympathizing with the poor and
the discouraged, taking upon herself the burden of the disconsolate,
literally, without thought of self, sharing, as it were, the misery and
sin of this awful city? And today, for the first time, he seemed to
have seen the woman in her--or was it the saint? and he recalled
that wonderful illumination of her plain face that made her actually
beautiful as she looked up from the little waif of humanity she held in
her arms. It had startled him, and struck a new chord in his heart, and
planted a new pang there that she had no belief in a future life.

It did not occur to him that the sudden joy in her face might have been
evoked by seeing him, for it was a long time since she had seen him. Nor
did he think that the pang at his heart had another cause than religious
anxiety. Ah, priest and worldly saint, how subtle and enduring are the
primal instincts of human nature!

"Yes," he said, as they walked away, in reply to her inquiry as to his
absence, "I have been in retreat a couple of weeks."

"I suppose," she said, softly, "you needed the rest; though," and she
looked at him professionally, "if you will allow me to say it, it seems
to me that you have not rested enough."

"I needed strength"--and it was the priest that spoke--"in meditation
and prayer to draw upon resources not my own."

"And in fasting, too, I dare say," she added, with a little smile.

"And why not?" he asked.

"Pardon me," she said; "I don't pretend to know what you need. I need
to eat, though Heaven knows it's hard enough to keep up an appetite down
here. But it is physical endurance you need for the work here. Do you
think fasting strengthens you to go through your work night and day?"

"I know I couldn't do it on my own strength." And Dr. Leigh recalled
times when she had seen him officiating in the chapel apparently
sustained by nothing but zeal and pure spirit, and wondered that he did
not faint and fall. And faint and fall he did, she was sure, when the
service was over.

"Well, it may be necessary to you, but not as an example to these
people. I see enough involuntary fastin