It was after one of his weeks of retreat, at the close of vesper service, that Dr. Leigh came to him.  He had been saying in his little talk that poverty is no excuse for irreligion, and that all aid in the hardship of this world was vain and worthless unless the sinner laid hold on eternal life.  Dr. Leigh, who was laboring with a serious practical problem, heard this coldly, and with a certain contempt for what seemed to her a vague sort of consolation.

“Well,” he said, when she came to him in the vestry, with a drop from the rather austere manner in which he had spoken, “what can I do for you?”

“For me, nothing, Father Damon.  I thought perhaps you would go round with me to see a pretty bad case.  It is in your parish.”

“Ah, did they send for me?  Do they want spiritual help?”

“First the natural, then the spiritual,” she replied, with a slight tone of sarcasm in her voice.  “That’s just like a priest,” she was thinking.  “I do not know what to do, and something must be done.”

“Did you report to the Associated Charities?”

“Yes.  But there’s a hitch somewhere.  The machine doesn’t take hold.  The man says he doesn’t want any charity, any association, treating him like a pauper.  He’s off peddling; but trade is bad, and he’s been away a week.  I’m afraid he drinks a little.”

“Well?”

“The mother is sick in bed.  I found her trying to do some fine stitching, but she was too weak to hold up the muslin.  There are five young children.  The family never has had help before.”

Father Damon put on his hat, and they went out together, and for some time picked their way along the muddy streets in silence.

At length he asked, in a softened voice, “Is the mother a Christian?”

“I didn’t ask,” she replied shortly.  “I found her crying because the children were hungry.”

Father Damon, still under the impression of his neglect of duty, did not heed her warning tone, but persisted, “You have so many opportunities, Dr. Leigh, in your visits of speaking a word.”

“About what?” she asked, refusing to understand, and hardened at the slightest sign of what she called cant.

“About the necessity of repentance and preparation for another life,” he answered, softly but firmly.  “You surely do not think human beings are created just for this miserable little experience here?”

“I don’t know.  I have too much to do with the want and suffering I see to raise anxieties about a world of which no one can possibly know anything.”

“Pardon me,” he persisted, “have you no sense of incompleteness in this life, in your own life? no inward consciousness of an undying personality?”