Ruth Leigh looked up quickly.  “But, Father Damon, it is you who ought to be rebuked for overwork.  You are undertaking too much.  You ought to go off for a vacation, and go at once.”

The father looked paler and thinner than usual, but his mouth was set in firm lines, and he said:  “It cannot be.  My duty is here.  And”—­he turned, and looked her full in the face—­“I cannot go.”

No need to explain that simple word.  No need to interpret the swift glance that their eyes exchanged—­the eager, the pitiful glance.  They both knew.  It was not the work.  It was not the suffering of the world.  It was the pain in their own hearts, and the awful chasm that his holy vows had put between them.  They stood so only an instant.  He was trembling in the extort to master himself, and in a second she felt the hot blood rising to her face.  Her woman’s wit was the first to break the hopeless situation.  She turned, and hailed a passing car.  “I cannot walk any farther.  Good-night.”  And she was gone.

The priest stood as if a sudden blow had struck him, following the retreating car till it was out of sight, and then turned homeward, dazed, and with feeble steps.  What was this that had come to him to so shake his life?  What devil was tempting him to break his vows and forsake his faith?  Should he fly from the city and from his work, or should he face what seemed to him, in the light of his consecration, a monstrous temptation, and try to conquer himself?  He began to doubt his power to do this.  He had always believed that it was easy to conquer nature.  And now a little brown woman had taught him that he reckons ill who leaves out the strongest human passion.  And yet suppose he should break his solemn vows and throw away his ideal, and marry Ruth Leigh, would he ever be happy?  Here was a mediaeval survival confronted by a nineteenth-century skepticism.  The situation was plainly insoluble.  It was as plainly so to the clear mind of the unselfish little woman without faith as it was to him.  Perhaps she could not have respected him if he had yielded.  Strangely enough, the attraction of the priest for her and for other women who called themselves servants of humanity was in his consecration, in his attitude of separation from the vanities and passions of this world.  They believed in him, though they did not share his faith.  To Ruth Leigh this experience of love was as unexpected as it was to the priest.  Perhaps because her life was lived on a less exalted plane she could bear it with more equanimity.  But who knows?  The habit of her life was endurance, the sturdy meeting of the duty of every day, with at least only a calm regard of the future.  And she would go on.  But who can measure the inner change in her life?  She must certainly be changed by this deep experience, and, terrible as it was, perhaps ennobled by it.  Is there not something supernatural in such a love itself?  It has a wonderful transforming power.  It is certain that a new light, a tender light, was cast upon her world.  And who can say that some time, in the waiting and working future, this new light might not change life altogether for this faithful soul?