her interest in her profession.

Father Damon, who had been persuaded by Edith's urgency to go down with
Jack for a few days to the Golden House, seemed uncommonly interested in
the reasons of Dr. Leigh's refusal to come.

"I never saw her," he said, "so cheerful. The more sickness there is,
the more radiant she is. I don't mean," he added, laughing, "in apparel.
Apparently she never thinks of herself, and positively she seems to take
no time to eat or sleep. I encounter her everywhere. I doubt if she ever
sits down, except when she drops in at the mission chapel now and then,
and sits quite unmoved on a bench by the door during vespers."

"Then she does go there?" said Edith.

"That is a queer thing. She would promptly repudiate any religious
interest. But I tell her she is a bit of a humbug. When I speak about
her philanthropic zeal, she says her interest is purely scientific."

"Anyway, I believe," Jack put in, "that women doctors are less mercenary
than men. I dare say they will get over that when the novelty of coming
into the profession has worn off."

"That is possible," said Father Damon; "but that which drives women into
professions now is the desire to do something rather than the desire
to make something. Besides, it is seldom, in their minds, a finality;
marriage is always a possibility."

"Yes," replied Edith, "and the probability of having to support a
husband and family; then they may be as mercenary as men are."

"Still, the enthusiasm of women," Father Damon insisted, "in hospital
and outdoor practice, the singleness of their devotion to it, is in
contrast to that of the young men-doctors. And I notice another thing
in the city: they take more interest in philanthropic movements, in the
condition of the poor, in the labor questions; they dive eagerly into
philosophic speculations, and they are more aggressively agnostics.
And they are not afraid of any social theories. I have one friend, a
skillful practitioner they tell me, a linguist, and a metaphysician,
a most agreeable and accomplished woman, who is in theory an extreme
nihilist, and looks to see the present social and political order
upset."

"I don't see," Jack remarked, "what women especially are to gain by such
a revolution."

"Perhaps independence, Jack," replied Edith. "You should hear my club
of working-girls, who read and think much on these topics, talk of these
things."

"Yes," said Father Damon, "you toss these topics about