“I am going down to Vireo’s,” he said.  “I have come to a place in my work where I want him.”

“So have I,” said Desire.  “But he is not at home.  I was going next to Miss Euphrasia.”

“And you and I are sent to stop each other.  My sister is away, at Milton, for two days.”

Desire turned round.  “Then I must go home again,” she said.

Mr. Kirkbright moved on, down the hill beside her.

“Can I do anything for you?” he inquired.

“Yes,” returned Desire, pausing, and looking gravely up at him.  “If you could go down to Luclarion Grapp’s,—­the Neighbors, you know,—­and carry some kind of a promise to a poor thing who has just been brought there, and who thinks there is no promise in the world; a woman who tried to kill her baby to get him out of it, and who says that the world is hell, and people don’t know they’ve got into it.  Go and tell her some of the things you told me, that morning up at Brickfields.”

“You have been to her?  What have you told her yourself, already?”

“I told her that it was not all badness when one could feel the misery of the badness.  That her pain at it was God’s pain for her.  That if He had done with her, she would be dead.”

“Would she believe you?  Did she seem to begin to believe?”

“I do not think she believes anything.  She can’t until the things to believe in come to her.  Mr. Vireo—­or you—­would make her see.  I told her I would send somebody who had more for her than I.”

“You have told her the first message,—­that the kingdom is at hand.  The Christ-errand must be done next.  The full errand of help.  That was what was sent to the world, after the voice had cried in the wilderness.  It isn’t Mr. Vireo or I,—­but the helping hand; the righting of condition; the giving of the new chance.  We must not leave all that to death and the angels.  Miss Desire, this woman must go to our mountain-refuge; to our sanatorium of souls.  I have a good deal to tell you about that.”

They had walked on again, as they talked; they had come to the foot of Borden Street.  They must now turn two different ways.

They were standing a moment at the corner, as Mr. Kirkbright spoke.  When he said “our refuge,—­our sanatorium,”—­Desire blushed again as she had blushed at Brickfields.

She was provoked at herself; why need personal pronouns come in at all?  Why, if they did, need they remind her of herself and him, instead of merely the thoughts that they had had together, the intent of which was high above them both?  Why need she be pleased and shy in her selfhood,—­ashamed lest he should detect the thought of pleasure in her at his sharing with her his grand purpose, recognizing in her the echo of his inspiration?  What made it so different that Christopher Kirkbright should discover and acknowledge such a sympathy between them, from her meeting it, as she had long done, in Miss Euphrasia?