his degradation, than many men, he
felt himself beside this girl a moral leper.

"Unclean, unclean!"

While that voice yet echoed in the desert places of his soul, he heard her
saying:

"I don't know why I should talk to you of these plans and projects of
mine. I never have spoken of them yet to anyone except the Mother.
But--you spoke of sympathy with those who suffer. I think you have it, Dr.
Saxham, and that you have suffered yourself. It is in your face. And--you
are not to suppose that I believe all men to be----"

He ended for her: "To be devouring beasts. No; but we are bad enough, the
best of us, if the truth must be told. And--I _have_ suffered, Miss
Mildare, at the hands of men and women, and through the unwritten laws, as
through the accepted institutions of what is called Society, most
brutally. I would not soil and scorch your ears with the recital of my
experiences, for all that a miracle could give me back. I swear to you
that I would not!"

She touched the little ears with a smile that had pathos in it.

"They have heard much that is evil, these ears of mine."

"And the evil has left them undefiled," said Saxham.

"Thank you!"

She begged him again not to forget the sick child at Mrs. Greening's
shelter, and hurried away, keeping her face from Saxham. He knew that
there was no hope for him, that there never would be any. And he loved
her--hungrily, hopelessly loved her. Dear innocent, wise enthusiast, with
her impossible scheme for cleansing the Augean stable of this world!
Chivalrous child-Quixote, tilting at the Black Windmills, whose sails are
whirled by burning blasts from Hell, and whose millstones grind the souls
of Eve's lost daughters into the dust that makes the devil's daily
bread--how should the Dop Doctor of Gueldersdorp dare to love her? But he
did not cease to, for all the height of his self-knowledge and all the
depth of his self-scorn.

He seemed to Lynette a strange, harsh man, but there was something in him
that won her liking. He had a stern mouth, she thought, and sorrowful,
angry eyes, with that thunder-cloud of black, lowering eyebrow above them.
And he looked at her as though she reminded him of someone he knew.
Perhaps he had sisters, though they could hardly be very young. Or it was
not a sister. He must be quite old--the Mother had thought him certainly
thirty-five--but possibly he had a young wife in England--or somewhere
else? And she had spoken to him of her grea