. And the
hat? Her friends had often joked her about the hat, but now for the
first time she seemed to see it as it might appear to others. As she
held it in her hand, and then put it on before the mirror, she smiled a
little, faintly, at its appearance. And then she laid it aside for her
better hat. She never had been so long in dressing before. And in the
evening, too, when it could make no difference! It might, after all,
be a little more cheerful for her forlorn patients. Perhaps she was not
conscious that she was making selections, that she was paying a little
more attention to her toilet than usual. Perhaps it was only the woman
who was conscious that she was loved.

It would be difficult to say what emotion was uppermost in the mind of
Father Damon as he left the house--mortification, contempt of himself,
or horror. But there was a sense of escape, of physical escape, and the
imperative need of it, that quickened his steps almost into a run. In
the increasing dark, at this hour, in this quarter of the town, there
were comparatively few whose observation of him would recall him to
himself. He thought only of escape, and of escape from that quarter of
the city that was the witness of his labors and his failure. For
the moment to get away from this was the one necessity, and without
reasoning in the matter, only feeling, he was hurrying, stumbling in
his haste, northward. Before he went to the hospital he had been tired,
physically weary. He was scarcely conscious of it now; indeed, his body,
his hated body, seemed lighter, and the dominant spirit now awakened to
contempt of it had a certain pleasure in testing it, in drawing upon
its vitality, to the point of exhaustion if possible. It should be seen
which was master. His rapid pace presently brought him into one of the
great avenues leading to Harlem. That was the direction he wished to go.
That was where he knew, without making any decision, he must go, to the
haven of the house of his order, on the heights beyond Harlem. A train
was just clattering along on the elevated road above him. He could see
the faces at the windows, the black masses crowding the platforms. It
went pounding by as if it were freight from another world. He was in
haste, but haste to escape from himself. That way, bearing him along
with other people, and in the moving world, was to bring him in touch
with humanity again, and so with what was most hateful in himself. He
must be alone. But the