tor, if he had not known
that she gathered nothing for herself. There had never been so much
sickness, she wrote, and such an opportunity for her. She was learning a
great deal, especially about some disputed contagious diseases. She
would like to see Mrs. Delancy, and she wouldn't mind a breath of air
that was more easily to be analyzed than that she existed in, but nothing
could induce her to give up her cases. All that appeared in her letter
was her interest in her profession.

Father Damon, who had been persuaded by Edith's urgency to go down with
Jack for a few days to the Golden House, seemed uncommonly interested in
the reasons of Dr. Leigh's refusal to come.

"I never saw her," he said, "so cheerful. The more sickness there is,
the more radiant she is. I don't mean," he added, laughing, "in apparel.
Apparently she never thinks of herself, and positively she seems to take
no time to eat or sleep. I encounter her everywhere. I doubt if she
ever sits down, except when she drops in at the mission chapel now and
then, and sits quite unmoved on a bench by the door during vespers."

"Then she does go there?" said Edith.

"That is a queer thing. She would promptly repudiate any religious
interest. But I tell her she is a bit of a humbug. When I speak about
her philanthropic zeal, she says her interest is purely scientific."

"Anyway, I believe," Jack put in, "that women doctors are less mercenary
than men. I dare say they will get over that when the novelty of coming
into the profession has worn off."

"That is possible," said Father Damon; "but that which drives women into
professions now is the desire to do something rather than the desire to
make something. Besides, it is seldom, in their minds, a finality;
marriage is always a possibility."

"Yes," replied Edith, "and the probability of having to support a husband
and family; then they may be as mercenary as men are."

"Still, the enthusiasm of women," Father Damon insisted, "in hospital and
outdoor practice, the singleness of their devotion to it, is in contrast
to that of the young men-doctors. And I notice another thing in the
city: they take more interest in philanthropic movements, in the
condition of the poor, in the labor questions; they dive eagerly into
philosophic speculations, and they are more aggressively agnostics.
And they are not afraid of any social theories. I have one friend,
a skillful practitioner they tell me, a linguist, and a metaphys