“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, and discuss them in the magazines, and fancy you are interested in socialistic movements. But you have no idea how real and vital they are, and how the dumb discontent of the working classes is being formulated into ideas. It is time we tried to understand each other.”
Not all the talk was of this sort at the Golden House. There were three worlds here—that of Jack, to which Edith belonged by birth and tradition and habit; that of which we have spoken, to which she belonged by profound sympathy; and that of Father Damon, to which she belonged by undefined aspiration. In him was the spiritual element asserting itself in a mediaeval form, in a struggle to mortify and deny the flesh and yet take part in modern life. Imagine a celibate and ascetic of the fifteenth century, who knew that Paradise must be gained through poverty and privation and suffering, interesting himself in the tenement-house question, in labor leagues, and the single tax.