children to keep their bodies free from weakness and deformities.  I don’t know why God should have made me a doctor, so many other things have seemed fitter for women; but I see the blessedness of such a useful life more and more every year, and I am very thankful for such a trust.  It is a splendid thing to have the use of any gift of God.  It isn’t for us to choose again, or wonder and dispute, but just work in our own places, and leave the rest to God.”

The boat was being carried downward by the ebbing tide, and George Gerry took the oars again, and rowed quietly and in silence.  He took his defeat unkindly and drearily; he was ashamed of himself once, because some evil spirit told him that he was losing much that would content him, in failing to gain this woman’s love.  It had all been so fair a prospect of worldly success, and she had been the queen of it.  He thought of himself growing old in Mr. Sergeant’s dusty office, and that this was all that life could hold for him.  Yet to be was better than to have.  Alas! if he had been more earnest in his growth, it would have been a power which this girl of high ideals could have been held and mastered by.  No wonder that she would not give up her dreams of duty and service, since she had found him less strong than such ideals.  The fancied dissatisfaction and piteousness of failure which she would be sure to meet filled his heart with dismay; yet, at that very next moment, resent it as he might, the certainty of his own present defeat and powerlessness could not be misunderstood.  Perhaps, after all, she knew what was right; her face wore again the look he had feared to disturb the night before, and his whole soul was filled with homage in the midst of its sorrow, because this girl, who had been his merry companion in the summer holidays, so sweet and familiar and unforgetable in the midst of the simple festivals, stood nearer to holier things than himself, and had listened to the call of God’s messengers to whom his own doors had been ignorantly shut.  And Nan that night was a soul’s physician, though she had been made to sorely hurt her patient before the new healthfulness could well begin.

They floated down the river and tried to talk once or twice, but there were many spaces of silence, and as they walked along the paved streets, they thought of many things.  An east wind was blowing in from the sea, and the elm branches were moving restlessly overhead.  “It will all be better to-morrow,” said Nan, as they stood on the steps at last.  “You must come to see Aunt Nancy very often after I have gone, for she will be lonely.  And do come in the morning as if nothing had been spoken.  I am so sorry.  Good-night, and God bless you,” she whispered; and when she stood inside the wide doorway, in the dark, she listened to his footsteps as he went away down the street.  They were slower than usual, but she did not call him back.

XXI