“I was sorry to let her go that day.  Friendless, I should have known.  I did know.  I should have felt.  You—­”

“No,” she said, gently, interrupting him; “that was my business.  You should not accuse yourself.  It was a physician’s business.”

“Yes, a physician—­the great Physician.  The Master never let the sin hinder his compassion for the sinner.”

To this she could make no reply.  Presently she looked up and said:  “But I am sure your visit was a great comfort to the poor girl!  She was very eager to see you.”

“I do not know.”

His air was still abstracted.  He was hardly thinking of the girl, after all, but of himself, of the woman who sat before him.  It seemed to him that he would have given the world to escape—­to fly from her, to fly from himself.  Some invisible force held him—­a strong, new, and yet not new, emotion, a power that seemed to clutch his very life.  He could not think clearly about it.  In all his discipline, in his consecration, in his vows of separation from the world, there seemed to have been no shield prepared for this.  The human asserted itself, and came in, overwhelming his guards and his barriers like a strong flood in the spring-time of the year, breaking down all artificial contrivances.  “They reckon ill who leave me out,” is the everlasting cry of the human heart, the great passion of life, incarnate in the first man and the first woman.

With a supreme effort of his iron will—­is the Will, after all, stronger than Love?—­Father Damona rose.  He stretched out his hand to say farewell.  She also stood, and she felt the hand tremble that held hers.

“God bless you!” he said.  “You are so good.”

He was going.  He took her other hand, and was looking down upon her face.  She looked up, and their eyes met.  It was for an instant, a flash, glance for glance, as swift as the stab of daggers.

All the power of heaven and earth could not recall that glance nor undo its revelations.  The man and the woman stood face to face revealed.

He bent down towards her face.  Affrighted by his passion, scarcely able to stand in her sudden emotion, she started back.  The action, the instant of time, recalled him to himself.  He dropped her hands, and was gone.  And the woman, her knees refusing any longer to support her, sank into a chair, helpless, and saw him go, and knew in that moment the height of a woman’s joy, the depth of a woman’s despair.

It had come to her!  Steeled by her science, shielded by her philanthropy, schooled in indifference to love, it had come to her!  And it was hopeless.  Hopeless?  It was absurd.  Her life was determined.  In no event could it be in harmony with his opinions, with his religion, which was dearer to him than life.  There was a great gulf between them which she could not pass unless she ceased to be herself.  And he?  A severe priest!  Vowed and consecrated against human passion!  What a government of the world—­if there were any government—­that could permit such a thing!  It was terrible.