But Worth had begun upon the construction of a raft, and was not in a home-going mood.  Thus encouraged by his young friend the man who mended the boats sat down on a log.

“When did you begin to want to know about the ’underlying principles of life’?” His smile quoted it, though less mockingly than tenderly.

Katie was silent.

“Was it the day she came?” he asked quietly.

She gasped.  Was he—­a wizard?  But looking at him and seeing he looked very much more like a man than like anything else, she met him as man should be met.  “The day who came?  I don’t know what you mean.”

“The girl.  Was it the day you took her in?  Saved her by making her save you?”

She was too startled by that for pretense.  She could only stare at him.

“I saw her before you did,” he said.

She looked around apprehensively.  The man who mended the boats knowing about Ann?  Was the whole world losing its mind just because it had been such a hot day?

But the world looking natural enough, she turned back to him.  “I don’t understand.  Tell me, please.”

As he summoned it, he changed.  She had an impression of all but the central thing falling away, leaving his spirit exposed.  And a thought or a vision gripped that spirit, and he tightened under it as a muscle would tighten.

When he turned to her, taking her in, self-consciousness fell away.  There was no place for it.

“You want to hear about it?” he asked.

She nodded.

“As a matter of fact, it’s nothing, as facts go.  Only an impression.  Yet an impression that swore to facts.  Perhaps you know that she came on the Island from the south bridge?”

Katie shook her head.  “I know nothing, save that suddenly she was there.”

That held him.  “And knowing nothing, you took her in?”

She kept silence, and he looked at her, dwelling upon it.  “And you,” he said softly, “don’t know anything about the ’underlying principles of life’?  Perhaps you don’t.  But if we had more you we’d have no her.”

She disclaimed it.  “It wasn’t that way—­an understanding way.  I didn’t do it because I thought it should be done; because I wanted to—­do good.  I—­oh, I don’t know.  I did it because I wanted to do it.  I did it because I couldn’t help doing it.”

That called to him.  He seemed one for whom ideas were as doors, ever opening into new places.  And he did not shut those doors, or turn from them, until he had looked as far as he could see.

“Perhaps,” he saw now, “that is the way it must come.  Doing it because you can’t help doing it.  It seems wonderful enough to work the wonder.”

“Work what wonder?” Katie asked timidly.

“The wonder of saving the world.”

He spoke it quietly, but passion, the passion of the visioner, leaped to his eyes at sound of what he had said.