--as many women do feel--that if she retained her husband's love all would
be well, and the danger involved to herself probably did not cross her
mind.

But what did cross her mind was that these associations meant only evil
for Jack, and that to be absorbed in the sort of life that seemed to
please him was for her to drift away from all her ideals.

A confused notion of all this was in her thoughts when she talked with
Father Damon, while the gentlemen were in the smoking-room. She asked
him about his mission.

"The interest continues," he replied; "but your East Side, Mrs. Delancy,
is a puzzling place."

"How so?"

"Perhaps you'll laugh if I say there is too much intelligence."

Edith did laugh, and then said: "Then you'd better move your mission
over to this side. Here is a field of good, unadulterated worldliness.
But what, exactly, do you mean?"

"Well, the attempt of science to solve the problem of sin and
wretchedness. What can you expect when the people are socialists and
their leaders agnostics?"

"But I thought you were something of a socialist yourself!"

"So I am," he said, frankly, "when I see the present injustice, the