own people and little
children to keep their bodies free from weakness and deformities. I
don't know why God should have made me a doctor, so many other things
have seemed fitter for women; but I see the blessedness of such a
useful life more and more every year, and I am very thankful for such
a trust. It is a splendid thing to have the use of any gift of God. It
isn't for us to choose again, or wonder and dispute, but just work in
our own places, and leave the rest to God."

The boat was being carried downward by the ebbing tide, and George
Gerry took the oars again, and rowed quietly and in silence. He took
his defeat unkindly and drearily; he was ashamed of himself once,
because some evil spirit told him that he was losing much that would
content him, in failing to gain this woman's love. It had all been so
fair a prospect of worldly success, and she had been the queen of it.
He thought of himself growing old in Mr. Sergeant's dusty office, and
that this was all that life could hold for him. Yet to be was better
than to have. Alas! if he had been more earnest in his growth, it
would have been a power which this girl of high ideals could have been
held and mastered by. No wonder that she would not give up her dreams
of duty and service, since she had found him less strong than such
ideals. The fancied dissatisfaction and piteousness of failure which
she would be sure to meet filled his heart with dismay; yet, at that
very next moment, resent it as he might, the certainty of his own
present defeat and powerlessness could not be misunderstood. Perhaps,
after all, she knew what was right; her face wore again the look he
had feared to disturb the night before, and his whole soul was filled
with homage in the midst of its sorrow, because this girl, who had
been his merry companion in the summer holidays, so sweet and familiar
and unforgetable in the midst of the simple festivals, stood nearer to
holier things than himself, and had listened to the call of God's
messengers to whom his own doors had been ignorantly shut. And Nan
that night was a soul's physician, though she had been made to sorely
hurt her patient before the new healthfulness could well begin.

They floated down the river and tried to talk once or twice, but there
were many spaces of silence, and as they walked along the paved
streets, they thought of many things. An east wind was blowing in from
the sea, and the elm branches were moving restlessly overhead