ician,
a most agreeable and accomplished woman, who is in theory an extreme
nihilist, and looks to see the present social and political order upset."

"I don't see," Jack remarked, "what women especially are to gain by such
a revolution."

"Perhaps independence, Jack," replied Edith. "You should hear my club of
working-girls, who read and think much on these topics, talk of these
things."

"Yes," said Father Damon, "you toss these topics about, and discuss them
in the magazines, and fancy you are interested in socialistic movements.
But you have no idea how real and vital they are, and how the dumb
discontent of the working classes is being formulated into ideas.
It is time we tried to understand each other."

Not all the talk was of this sort at the Golden House. There were three
worlds here--that of Jack, to which Edith belonged by birth and tradition
and habit; that of which we have spoken, to which she belonged by
profound sympathy; and that of Father Damon, to which she belonged by
undefined aspiration. In him was the spiritual element asserting itself
in a mediaeval form, in a struggle to mortify and deny the flesh and yet
take part in modern life. Imagine a celibate and ascetic of the
fifteenth century, who knew that Paradise must be gained through poverty
and privation and suffering, interesting himself in the tenement-house
question, in labor leagues, and the single tax.

Yet, hour after hour, in those idle summer days, when nature was in a
mood that suggested grace and peace, when the waves lapsed along the
shore and the cicada sang in the hedge, did Father Damon unfold to Edith
his ideas of the spiritualization of modern life through a conviction of
its pettiness and transitoriness. How much more content there would be
if the poor could only believe that it matters little what happens here
if the heart is only pure and fixed on the endless life.

"Oh, Father Damon," replied Edith, with a grave smile, "I think your
mission ought to be to the rich."

"Yes," he replied, for he also knew his world, "if I wanted to make my
ideas fashionable; but I want to make them operative. By-and-by," he
added, also with a smile, "we will organize some fishermen and carpenters
and tailors on a mission to the rich."

Father Damon's visit was necessarily short, for his work called him back
to town, and perhaps his conscience smote him a little for indulging in
this sort of retreat. By the middle of August Jack's yacht wa