His eyes told her that he was about to return to the one subject that she dreaded.  She tried—­as women will try, in the little emergencies of their lives—­to gain time.

“I am interested about your Home,” she said:  “I want to know what sort of place it is.  Is the discipline very severe?”

“There is no discipline,” he answered warmly.  “My one object is to be a friend to my friendless fellow-creatures; and my one way of governing them is to follow the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.  Whatever else I may remind them of, when they come to me, I am determined not to remind them of a prison.  For this reason—­though I pity the hardened wanderers of the streets, I don’t open my doors to them.  Many a refuge, in which discipline is inevitable, is open to these poor sinners already.  My welcome is offered to penitents and sufferers of another kind—­who have fallen from positions in life, in which the sense of honor has been cultivated; whose despair is associated with remembrances which I may so encourage, with the New Testament to help me, as to lead them back to the religious influences under which their purer and happier lives may have been passed.  Here and there I meet with disappointments.  But I persist in my system of trusting them as freely as if they were my own children; and, for the most part, they justify my confidence in them.  On the day—­if it ever comes—­when I find discipline necessary, I shall suffer my disappointment and close my doors.”

“Is your house open,” Catherine asked, “to men and women alike?”

He was eager to speak with her on a subject more interesting to him even than his Home.  Answering her question, in this frame of mind, his thoughts wandered; he drew lines absently with his walking-stick on the soft earth under the trees.

“The means at my disposal,” he said, “are limited.  I have been obliged to choose between the men and the women.”

“And you have chosen women?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because a lost woman is a more friendless creature than a lost man.”

“Do they come to you? or do you look for them?”

“They mostly come to me.  There is one young woman, however, now waiting to see me, whom I have been looking for.  I am deeply interested in her.”

“Is it her beauty that interests you?”

“I have not seen her since she was a child.  She is the daughter of an old friend of mine, who died many years ago.”

“And with that claim on you, you keep her waiting?”

“Yes.”

He let his stick drop on the ground and looked at Catherine; but he offered no explanation of his strange conduct.  She was a little disappointed.  “You have been some time away from your Home,” she said; still searching for his reasons.  “When do you go back?”

“I go back,” he answered, “when I know whether I may thank God for being the happiest man living.”

They were both silent.