“Robertson, I want to talk to you in confidence about my guest, who, as you say, is a very sweet woman.  You could do something for her which I couldn’t do.  I have none of your impelling gentleness.  You know how to stir that which dwells in the inner sanctuary, to start it working for itself; I’m more apt to try to work for it, or at it.  Perhaps I can rouse up a sinner and make him think.  I’ve got a good bit of the instinct of the missioner.  But my dear guest there isn’t a sinner, except as we all are!  She’s a very good woman who doesn’t quite understand.  I think perhaps you might help her to understand.  She possesses a great love, and she doesn’t know quite how to handle it, or even to value it.”

The clock struck seven when they stopped talking.

That evening, after dinner, Canon Wilton asked Rosamund to sing.  Almost eagerly she agreed.

“I shall love to sing in the Precincts,” she said, as she went to the piano.

Father Robertson, who had been sitting with his back to the piano, moved to the other side of the room.  While Rosamund sang he watched her closely.  He saw that she was quite unconscious of being watched, and her unconsciousness of herself made him almost love her.  Her great talent he appreciated fully, for he was devoted to music; but he appreciated much more the moral qualities she showed in her singing.  He was a man who could not forbear from searching for the soul, from following its workings.  He had met all sorts and conditions of men, and with few he had not been friends.  He had known, knew now, scientists for whose characters and lives he had strong admiration, and who felt positive that the so-called soul of man was merely the product of the brain, resided in the brain, and must cease with the dispersal of the brain at death.  He was not able to prove the contrary.  That did not trouble him at all.  It was not within the power of anything or of any one to trouble this man’s faith.  He did not mind being thought a fool.  Indeed, being without conceit, and even very modest, he believed himself to be sometimes very foolish.  But he knew he was not a fool in his faith, which transcended forms, and swore instinctively brotherhood with all honest beliefs, and even with all honest disbeliefs.  In his gentle, sometimes slightly whimsical way, he was as sincere as Canon Wilton; but whereas the Canon showed the blunt side of sincerity, he usually showed the tender and winning side.  He found good in others as easily and as surely as the diviner finds the spring hidden under the hard earth’s surface.  His hazel twig twisted if there was present only one drop of the holy water.

He discerned many drops in Rosamund.  In nothing of her was her enthusiasm for what was noble and clean and sane and beautiful more apparent than in her singing.  Her voice and her talent were in service when she sang, in service to the good.  Music can be evil, neurotic, decadent and even utterly base.  She never touched musical filth, which she recognized as swiftly as dirt on a body or corruption in a soul.