“Wasn’t it all very strange!” Edith spoke, after a moment.  “I didn’t suppose he cared.  Do you think it was just sentiment?”

“I shouldn’t wonder.  Men like Henderson do queer things.  In the hearts of such hardened men there are sometimes roots of sentiment that you wouldn’t suspect.  But I don’t know.  The Lord somehow looks out for his poor.”

Notwithstanding this windfall of charity, Father Damon seemed somewhat depressed.  “I wish,” he said, after a pause, “he had given it to the mission.  We are so poor, and modern philanthropy all runs in other directions.  The relief of temporary suffering has taken the place of the care of souls.”

“But Dr. Leigh said that you were interesting the churches in the labor unions.”

“Yes.  It is an effort to do something.  The church must put herself into sympathetic relations with these people, or she will accomplish nothing.  To get them into the church we must take up their burdens.  But it is a long way round.  It is not the old method of applying the gospel to men’s sins.”

“And yet,” Edith insisted, “you must admit that such people as Dr. Leigh are doing a good work.”

Father Damon did not reply immediately.  Presently he asked:  “Do you think, Mrs. Delancy, that Dr. Leigh has any sympathy with the higher life, with spiritual things?  I wish I could think so.”

“With the higher life of humanity, certainly.”

“Ah, that is too vague.  I sometimes feel that she and those like her are the worst opponents to our work.  They substitute humanitarianism for the gospel.”

“Yet I know of no one who works more than Ruth Leigh in the self-sacrificing spirit of the Master.”

“Whom she denies!” The quick reply came with a flush in his pale face, and he instantly arose and walked away to the window and stood for some moments in silence.  When he turned there was another expression in his eyes and a note of tenderness in his voice that contradicted the severity of the priest.  It was the man that spoke.  “Yes, she is the best woman I ever knew.  God help me!  I fear I am not fit for my work.”

This outburst of Father Damon to her, so unlike his calm and trained manner, surprised Edith, although she had already some suspicion of his state of mind.  But it would not have surprised her if she had known more of men, the necessity of the repressed and tortured soul for sympathy, and that it is more surely to be found in the heart of a pure woman than elsewhere.

But there was nothing that she could say, as she took his hand to bid him good-by, except the commonplace that Dr. Leigh had expressed anxiety that he was overworking, and that for the sake of his work he must be more prudent.  Yet her eyes expressed the sympathy she did not put in words.