graceful.
As she turned her face towards him from time to time he thought its
expression beautiful. Ruth Leigh would have smiled grimly if any one had
called her beautiful, but then she did not know how she looked sometimes
when her feelings were touched. It is said that the lamp of love can
illumine into beauty any features of clay through which it shines. As
he gazed, letting himself drift as in a dream, suddenly a thought
shot through his mind that made him close his eyes, and such a severe
priestly look came upon his face that the little girl, who had never
taken her eyes off him, exclaimed:

"It is worse?"

"No, my dear," he replied, with a reassuring smile; "at least, I hope
not."

But when the doctor, finishing her work, drew a chair into the doorway,
and sat by the foot of his bed, the stern look still remained on his
pale face. And the doctor, she also was the doctor again, as matter of
fact as in any professional visit.

"You are very kind," he said.

There was a shade of impatience on her face as she replied, "But you
must be a little kind to yourself."

"It doesn't matter."

"But it does matter. You defeat the very work you want to do. I'm going
to report you to your order." And then she added, more lightly, "Don't
you know it is wrong to commit suicide?"

"You don't understand," he replied. "There is more than one kind of
suicide; you don't believe in the suicide of the soul. Ah, me!" And a
shade of pain passed over his face.

She was quick to see this. "I beg your pardon, Father Damon. It is none
of my business, but we are all so anxious to have you speedily well
again."

Just then Father Monies returned, and the doctor rose to go. She took
the little girl by the hand and said, "Come, I was just going round to
see your father. Good-by. I shall look in again tomorrow."

"Thank you--thank you a thousand times. But you have so much to do that
you must not bother about me."

Whether he said this to quiet his own conscience, secretly hoping that
he might see her again on the morrow, perhaps he himself could not have
decided.

Late the next afternoon, after an unusually weary round of visits, made
in the extreme heat and in a sort of hopeless faithfulness, Dr. Leigh
reached the tenement in which Father Damon lodged: In all the miserable
scenes of the day it had been in her mind, giving to her work a pleasure
that she did not openly acknowledge even to herself, that she should see
him.

The c