tremendous thing where a woman was concerned, a woman in something the
same position as this poor girl; but that shaking, thrilling thing was
still far off from him. For this child he only felt the healer's desire
to heal.

He was one of those men who never force an issue; he never put forward
the hands of the clock. He felt that sooner or later Louise Mazarine--he
did not yet know her Christian name--would command his help, as so many
had done in that prairie country, and not necessarily for relief of
physical pain or the curing of disease. He had helped as many men and
women mentally and morally as physically; the spirit of healing was
behind everything he did. His world recognized it, and that was why he
was never known by his name in all the district--he was only admiringly
called "The Young Doctor."

He had never been to Tralee since the Mazarines had arrived, though he
had passed it often and had sometimes seen Louise in the garden with her
dog, her black cat and her bright canary. The combination of the cat and
the canary did not seem incongruous where she was concerned; it was as
though something in her passionless self neutralized even the antagonisms
of natural history. She had made the gloomy black cat and the light-
hearted canary to be friends. Perhaps that came from an everlasting
patience which her life had bred in her; perhaps it was the powerful gift
of one in touch with the remote, primitive things.

The Young Doctor had also seen her in the paddock with the horses, bare-
headed, lithe and so girlishly slim, with none of the unmistakable if
elusive lines belonging to the maturity which marriage brings. He had
taken off his hat to her in the distance, but she had never waved a hand
in reply. She only stood and gazed at him, and her look followed him