Love, to be sure, was as unexpected in her scheme of life as it was in his; but there was on her part no reason why she should not yield to it.  There was every reason in her nature and in her theory why she should, for, bounded as her vision of life was by this existence, love was the highest conceivable good in life.  It had been with a great shout of joy that the consciousness had come to her that she loved and was loved.  Though she might never see him again, this supreme experience for man or woman, this unsealing of the sacred fountain of life, would be for her an enduring sweetness in her lonely and laborious pilgrimage.  How strong love is they best know to whom it is offered and denied.

And why, so far as she was concerned, should she deny it?  An ordinary woman probably would not.  Love is reason enough.  Why should artificial conventions defeat it?  Why should she sacrifice herself, if he were willing to brave the opinion of the world for her sake?  Was it any new thing for good men to do this?  But Ruth Leigh was not an ordinary woman.  Perhaps if her intellect had not been so long dominant over her heart it would have been different.  But the habit of being guided by reason was second nature.  She knew that not only his vow, but the habit of life engendered by the vow, was an insuperable barrier.  And besides, and this was the touchstone of her conception of life and duty, she felt that if he were to break his vow, though she might love him, her respect for him would be impaired.

It was a singular phenomenon—­very much remarked at the time—­that the women who did not in the least share Father Damon’s spiritual faith, and would have called themselves in contradistinction materialists, were those who admired him most, were in a way his followers, loved to attend his services, were inspired by his personality, and drawn to him in a loving loyalty.  The attraction to these very women was his unworldliness, his separateness, his devotion to an ideal which in their reason seemed a delusion.  And no women would have been more sensitive than they to his fall from his spiritual pinnacle.

It was easy with a little contrivance to avoid meeting him.  She did not go to the chapel or in its neighborhood when he was likely to be going to or from service.  She let others send for him when in her calls his ministration was required, and she was careful not to linger where he was likely to come.  A little change in the time of her rounds was made without neglecting her work, for that she would not do, and she trusted that if accident threw him in her way, circumstances would make it natural and not embarrassing.  And yet his image was never long absent from her thoughts; she wondered if he were dejected, if he were ill, if he were lonely, and mostly there was for him a great pity in her heart, a pity born, alas! of her own sense of loneliness.

How much she was repressing her own emotions she knew one evening when she returned from her visits and found a letter in his handwriting.  The sight of it was a momentary rapture, and then the expectation of what it might contain gave her a feeling of faintness.  The letter was long.  Its coming needs a word of explanation.