“Yes,” he replied, for he also knew his world, “if I wanted to make my ideas fashionable; but I want to make them operative.  By-and-by,” he added, also with a smile, “we will organize some fishermen and carpenters and tailors on a mission to the rich.”

Father Damon’s visit was necessarily short, for his work called him back to town, and perhaps his conscience smote him a little for indulging in this sort of retreat.  By the middle of August Jack’s yacht was ready, and he went with Mavick and the Van Dams and some other men of the club on a cruise up the coast.  Edith was left alone with her Baltimore friend.

And yet not alone.  As she lay in her hammock in those dreamy days a new world opened to her.  It was not described in the chance romance she took up, nor in the volume of poems she sometimes held in her hand, with a finger inserted in the leaves.  Of this world she felt herself the centre and the creator, and as she mused upon its mysteries, life took a new, strange meaning to her.  It was apt to be a little hazy off there in the watery horizon, and out of the mist would glide occasionally a boat, and the sun would silver its sails, and it would dip and toss for half an hour in the blue, laughing sea, and then disappear through the mysterious curtain.  Whence did it come?  Whither had it gone?  Was life like that?  Was she on the shore of such a sea, and was this new world into which she was drifting only a dream?  By her smile, by the momentary illumination that her sweet thoughts made in her lovely, hopeful face, you knew that it was not.  Who can guess the thoughts of a woman at such a time?  Are the trees glad in the spring, when the sap leaps in their trunks, and the buds begin to swell, and the leaves unfold in soft response to the creative impulse?  The miracle is never old nor commonplace to them, nor to any of the human family.  The anticipation of life is eternal.  The singing of the birds, the blowing of the south wind, the sparkle of the waves, all found a response in Edith’s heart, which leaped with joy.  And yet there was a touch of melancholy in it all, the horizon was so vast, and the mist of uncertainty lay along it.  Literature, society, charities, all that she had read and experienced and thought, was nothing to this, this great unknown anxiety and bliss, this saddest and sweetest of all human experiences.  She prayed that she might be worthy of this great distinction, this responsibility and blessing.

And Jack, dear Jack, would he love her more?

XII

Although Father Damon had been absent from his charge only ten days, it was time for him to return.  If he had not a large personal following, he had a wide influence.  If comparatively few found their way to his chapel, he found his way to many homes; his figure was a familiar one in the streets, and his absence was felt by hundreds who had no personal relations with him, but who had become accustomed to