For a moment he stood and watched the plain, resolute little woman threading her way through the crowded and unclean street, and then slowly walked away to his apartment, filled with sadness and perplexity.

The apartment which he occupied was not far from the mission chapel, and it was the one clean spot among the ill-kept tenements; but as to comfort, it was not much better than the cell of an anchorite.  Of this, however, he was not thinking as he stretched himself out on his pallet to rest a little from the exhausting labors of the day.  Probably it did not occur to him that his self-imposed privations lessened his strength for his work.

He was thinking of Ruth Leigh.  What a rare soul!  And yet apparently she did not think or care whether she had a soul.  What could be the spring of her incessant devotion?  If ever woman went about doing good in an unselfish spirit it was she.  Yet she confessed her work hopeless.  She had no faith, no belief in immortality, no expectation of any reward, nothing to offer to anybody beyond this poor life.  Was this the enthusiasm of humanity, of which he heard so much?  But she did not seem to have any illusions, or to be burned up by enthusiasm.  She just kept on.  Ah, he thought, what a woman she would be if she were touched by the fire of faith!

Meantime, Ruth Leigh went on her round.  One day was like another, except that every day the kaleidoscope of misery showed new combinations, new phases of suffering and incompetence, and there was always a fresh interest in that.  For years now this had been her life, in the chill of winter and the heat of summer, without rest or vacation.  The amusements, the social duties, the allurements of dress and society, that so much occupied the thoughts of other women, did not seem to come into her life.  For books she had little time, except the books of her specialty.  The most exciting novels were pale compared with her daily experiences of real life.  Almost her only recreation was a meeting of the working-girls, a session of her labor lodge, or an assembly at the Cooper Union, where some fiery orator, perhaps a priest, or a clever agitator, a working-man glib of speech, who had a mass of statistics at the end of his tongue, who read and discussed, in some private club of zealots of humanity, metaphysics, psychology, and was familiar with the whole literature of labor and socialism, awoke the enthusiasm of the discontented or the unemployed, and where men and women, in clear but homely speech, told their individual experiences of wrong and injustice.  There was evidence in all these demonstrations and organizations that the world was moving, and that the old order must change.

Years and years the little woman had gone on with her work, and she frankly confessed to Edith, one day when they were together going her rounds, that she could see no result from it all.  The problem of poverty and helplessness and incapacity seemed to her more hopeless than when she began.  There might be a little enlightenment here and there, but there was certainly not less misery.  The state of things was worse than she thought at first; but one thing cheered her:  the people were better than she thought.  They might be dull and suspicious in the mass, but she found so much patience, unselfishness, so many people of good hearts and warm affections.