do visiting in the tenements--to call
upon families of the folk who would not come to the Settlement House.
But the Superintendent had met her, always, with a denial that was
wearily firm.

"I have a staff of women--older women from outside--who do the visiting,"
she had said. "I'm afraid" she was eyeing Rose-Marie in the blue coat and
the blue tam-o'-shanter, "I'm afraid that you'd scarcely be--convincing.
And," she had added, "Dr. Blanchard takes care of all the detail in that
department of our work!"

Dr. Blanchard ... Rose-Marie felt the tears coming afresh at the thought
of him! She remembered how she had written home enthusiastic,
schoolgirlish letters about the handsome man who sat across the dining
table from her. It had seemed exciting, romantic, that only the three of
them really should live in the great brownstone house--the Young Doctor,
the Superintendent--who made a perfect chaperon--and herself. It had
seemed, somehow, almost providential that they should be thrown together.
Yes, Rose-Marie remembered how she had been attracted to Dr. Blanchard at
the very first--how she had found nothing wanting in his wiry strength,
his broad shoulders, his dark, direct eyes.

But she had not been in the Settlement House long before she began to
feel the clash of their natures. When she started to church service, on
her first Sunday in New York, she surprised a smile of something that
might have been cynical mirth upon his lean, square-jawed face. And when
she spoke of the daily prayers that she and her aunts had so beautifully
believed in, back in the little town, he laughed at her--not unkindly,
but with the sympathetic superiority that one feels for a too trusting
child. Rose-Marie, thinking it over, knew that she would rather meet
direct unkindness than that bland superiority!

And so--though there had never been an open quarrel until the one at the
luncheon table--Rose-Marie had learned to look to the Superintendent for
encouragement, rather than to the Young Doctor. And she had frigidly
declined his small courtesies--a visit to the movies, a walk in the park,
a 'bus ride up Fifth Avenue.

"I never went to the movies at home," she had told him. Or, "I'm too
busy, just now, to take a walk." Or, "I can't go with you to-day. I've
letters to write."

"It's a shame," she confided, on occasion, to the Superintendent, "that
Dr. Blanchard never goes to church. It's a shame that he has had so
little religious life.