“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 metaphysician, 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.”