may furnish a better mental table for her, for the time, and set her
foraging in new direction for the future."

"But how could you tell that from the very little conversation you had
with her?"

"It was not the conversation only--I watched everything about her; and
interpreted it by what I know about women. I believe that many of them
go into a consumption just from discontent--the righteous discontent
of a soul which is meant to sit at the Father's table, and so cannot
content itself with the husks which the swine eat. The theological
nourishment which is offered them is generally no better than husks.
They cannot live upon it, and so die and go home to their Father. And
without good spiritual food to keep the spiritual senses healthy and
true, they cannot see the thing's about them as they really are. They
cannot find interest in them, because they cannot find their _own_
place amoungst them. There was one thing though that confirmed me in
this idea about Miss Cathcart. I looked over her music on purpose, and
I did not find one song that rose above the level of the drawing-room,
or one piece of music that had any deep feeling or any thought in
it. Of course I judged by the composers."

"You astonish me by the truth and rapidity of your judgements. But how
did you, who like myself are a bachelor, come to know so much about
the minds of women?"

"I believe in part by reading Milton, and learning from him a certain
high notion about myself and my own duty. None but a pure man can
understand women--I mean the true womanhood that is in them. But more
than to Milton am I indebted to that brother of mine you heard preach