myself together with a little rest. But I wanted to tell you how much I
appreciate your work, and--and what a comfort you have been to me in my
poor labors. I used to hope that some time you would see this world in
relation to the other, and--"

"Yes, I know," she interrupted, hastily, "I cannot think as you
do, but--" And she could not go on for a great lump in her throat.
Involuntarily she rose from her seat. The interview was too trying.
Father Damon rose also. There was a moment's painful silence as they
looked in each other's faces. Neither could trust the voice for speech.
He took her hand and pressed it, and said "God bless you!" and went out,
closing the door softly.

A moment after he opened it again and stood on the threshold. She was
in her chair, her head bowed upon her arms on the table. As he spoke she
looked up, and she never forgot the expression of his face.

"I want to say, Ruth"--he had never before called her by her first name,
and his accent thrilled her--"that I shall pray for you as I pray for
myself, and though I may never see you again in this world, the greatest
happiness that can come to me in this life will be to hear that you have
learned to say Our Father which art in heaven."

As she looked he was gone, and his last words remained a refrain in her
mind that evening and afterwards--"Our Father which art in heaven"--a
refrain recurring again and again in all her life, inseparable from the
memory of the man she loved.

XXII

Along the Long Island coast lay the haze of early autumn. It was the
time of lassitude. In the season of ripening and decay Nature seemed to
have lost her spring, and lay in a sort of delicious languor. Sea and
shore were in a kind of truce, and the ocean south wind brought cool
refreshment but no incentive.

From the sea the old brown farmhouse seemed a snug haven of refuge; from
the inland road it appeared, with its spreading, sloping roofs, like
an ancient sea-craft come ashore, which had been covered in and then
embowered by kindly Nature with foliage. In those days its golden-brown
color was in harmony with the ripening orchards and gardens.

Surely, if anywhere in the world, peace was here. But to its owner this
very peace and quietness was becoming intolerable. The waiting days were
so long, the sleepless nights of uncertainty were so weary. When her
work was done, and Edith sat with a book or some sewing under the arbor
where the grape clusters hun