nd
how she had laid aside her idea of the convent for their sake, but would
now take up her whole duty to God by entering a sisterhood, he said
casually:

"It seems to me these three duties work together; and when you were
busiest with your father and your country, then were you most faithful
to God."

"Very true," she replied, looking up with surprise. "Obedience is better
than sacrifice."

"Take care that you are not deceiving yourself, Honora. Which would
cause more pain, to give up your art and your cause, or to give up the
convent?"

"To give up the convent," she replied promptly.

"That looks to me like selfishness," he said gently. "There are many
nuns in the convents working for the wretched and helping the poor and
praying for the oppressed, while only a few women are devoted directly
to the cause of freedom. It strikes me that you descend when you retire
from a field of larger scope to one which narrows your circle and
diminishes your opportunities. I am not criticizing the nun's life, but
simply your personal scheme."

"And you think I descend?" she murmured with a little gasp of pain.
"Why, how can that be?"

"You are giving up the work, the necessary work, which few women are
doing, to take up a work in which many women are engaged," he answered,
uncertain of his argument, but quite sure of his intention. "You lose
great opportunities to gain small ones, purely personal. That's the way
it looks to me."

With wonderful cunning he unfolded his arguments in the next few weeks.
He appealed to her love for her father, her wish to see his work
continued; he described his own helplessness, very vaguely though, in
carrying out schemes with which he was unacquainted, and to which he was
vowed; he mourned over the helpless peoples of the world, for whom a new
community was needed to fight, as the Knights of St. John fought for
Christendom; and he painted with delicate satire that love of ease which
leads heroes to desert the greater work for the lesser on the plea of
the higher life. Selfishly she sought rest, relief for the taxing
labors, anxieties, and journeys of fifteen years, and not the will of
God, as she imagined. Was he conscious of his own motives? Did he
discover therein any selfishness? Who can say?

He discoursed at the same time to Owen, and in the same fashion. Ledwith
felt that his dreams were patch work beside the rainbow visions of this
California miner, who had the mines which make the