“Do you really feel so?  Are you so like a physician?” asked Gerald, quickly.  “Do you seek to do good only to those who pay for the care you give them?  Is not your mission with all with whom you are thrown?”

“The days of single-handed combat against the world are over,” answered Denham.  “You cripple a man by giving him too wide a field of action.”

“I would not take less than the widest were I a man!” exclaimed Gerald, proudly.

“Would you be a clergyman?”

“No.  I have no talent for writing.  I could not preach.”

“Nay, I think you an admirable preacher,” said Denham, gently, without the faintest tinge of sarcasm in either tone or look.  Gerald glanced at him quickly and flushed slightly.

“I am too dogmatic myself,” she said, biting her lip and turning away her head.  “I should not be so hard on Mrs. Upjohn.”

“You do not intend to be hard on any one.”

“But to be just is to seem hard,” said Gerald.

“It is a divine prerogative to know just how far to temper justice with mercy,” Denham answered.  “I suppose none of us can hope to attain to perfect knowledge; but if there must be error, I would for myself rather err in excess of mercy than of justice.”

“In other words, between two evils you would choose the least,” Gerald replied.  “That is the common way of getting out of the difficulty.  But it seems to me like compromising with evil.  There ought to be always some third, wholly right, way out of every dilemma, if only one sought earnestly enough.”  She spoke more as if to herself than to him.

“Then perhaps,” said Denham, pleasantly, “we may hope that you will in time light upon the very kindliest and rightest way combined of judging not only abstract subjects, but also the not altogether unworthy inhabitants of even this little place of Joppa.”

“Oh, Joppa!” cried Gerald, all the impatience instantly coming back to her face and voice.  As instantly too she frowned in self-conviction, and turned almost contritely to Denham.  “You see, Mr. Halloway, I shall have to bring my own character first to that future Day of Judgment, and to be very careful that I do not err on your side,—­in being too merciful.”

CHAPTER XII.

WHY DO SUMMER ROSES FADE?

A few more days slipped by, easily and swiftly, as all days did in Joppa.  The famous party was discussed and re-discussed down to its minutest details.  Mrs. Hardcastle recovered from her subsequent attack of neuralgia.  Mr. Hardcastle, who went from house to house, gathering compliments as an assessor levies taxes, completed the round of the village and began again.  Mrs. Upjohn asked for and obtained the recipe of a certain dish, the like of which had never before been seen in Joppa, and the Joppites commended her boldness in asking and condemned Mrs. Hardcastle’s weakness in giving.  The report that Mr. Upjohn