Surely, the anguish of the damned, as they longed for paradise, could not be more terrible than the sadness of those who, in the cold, muddy streets, between the towering, gray houses, under the drizzling sky of London, dreamed of that island of theirs in the far Pacific.

The fire in the fireplace was smoking and smoldering, seemingly unwilling to burn; in the space between the logs flickered little tongues of flame; and each, before it died, appeared to cast a warmer glow on the girl's finetextured skin and on her liquid eyes, amber, like clear coffee, that rested, with the same pathetic expression of pity, now on the bandaged hand and now on the sad realities about her. Through the glass of the door the group of Chinese sailors could still be seen, motionless and almost silent, huddling about a street-lamp, shivering under the upturned collars of their thin jackets, but stoical. Now and then the distant muffled clang of the tram gongs sounded; then silence once more, broken only by the shrill laugh of an Asiatic or the shuffle of a sandal on the pavement. Taoufa gazed at the bandage on her hand and dreamed of her island. Her ragged shawl had fallen back, uncovering her hair, which shone in the gas-light. To warm her feet, she thrust her slippers, covered with tarnished spangles, nearer to the fire, and sadly watched the small flames creep out from the wood and die die like so many hopeless yearnings.

At a glance from his uncle, Timmy got up, walked nonchalantly toward the door, and stood there strumming a march on the pane as he gazed out at

gently:

"And-what are you doing here, my

child?"

She gave him a rapid glance of mingled astonishment and alarm, and shook her head. He hesitated, and changed the form of his question.

"Who is with you here, my child?"

She explained, without a trace of embarrassment, that two men of her own race were with her, and that she could not leave them because they needed her; one was sick, and the other was very old. But some day, in a little while perhaps, they would go back to their island. If one of them died, the two who were left would go back, anyway.

"Who were these men?"

One of them was very old and full of wisdom, her grandfather perhaps, though she was n't quite sure. She uttered his name, the name he bore in the far-away island, and it was long, and sonorous as the verse of a canticle.

"And the other?" The other was her husband.

Father Flanagan asked in a low and solemn voice:

"Was it a priest out there who married you?"

She shook her head without a word. It seemed to her quite natural, evidently, that he should question her thus. She had nothing to reproach herself for; her bearing and the serene expression of her eyes gave proof of a clear conscience: but she seemed to fear that, like the good father "out there," he might view certain things as incomprehensible. Yet, when he insisted, she revealed to him in all sincerity that she had been married,

quite as one should be, by a priest and all the proper ceremonies, but that her husband had not been kind to her and that she had left him. She had left him for this other man, who was kind to her and loved her. Only he was going to die!

The priest's hands rose in a gesture that, even before he spoke, bore witness to the blackness of her sinful state. So not all the teachings of the fathers "out there," nor the privilege of having been admitted to the true faith, nor all the promises of eternal joys given her by the ministers of God, nor their threats of unending punishment, had been able to protect her! More fortunate than many others, she had been saved by powerful intercessors, and, more guilty than these others, she had again fallen, a backslider, into the slime of sin. Why, nothing could loose the bonds forged by the white fathers! They lasted as long as life, and longer, and to break them was nothing short of fastening about one's own neck, and that of one's accomplice, the shackles of the damned.

Taoufa replied, with a shake of her head, that if there was any sin in it, the sin would n't last long, because the husband she had now was going to die. If he had n't been so near to dying, they would have returned together to their island, and there together they would have been happy.

Father Flanagan straightened up and frowned severely, assuming an authority as awe-inspiring as that of the fathers who had instructed her in the Christian religion. The manner of her life was a grave and terrible state of sin, he warned her; each glance of passion from the man who said he loved her was not the innocent thing

it seemed to be, but an offense and a stain, and every day she tolerated this stain she committed a new crime against the goodness of God and the majesty of the church.

But Taoufa merely looked at the fire and again shook her head.

She had pulled her shawl more closely about her shoulders, and her eyes betrayed a childlike distress. A hard land this, without pity, as without sunshine, where one had to give up everything to be sure of heavenly rewards, uncertain at best, and which, young as she was, she could hope to attain only after many long years. She held the corners of her shawl in her uninjured hand, and cowered a little under the father's admonishments, fearful, and yet hostile, as though she would defend something precious, to which she had a right, against all comers.

The priest repeated in a stern voice: "It is a terrible sin!"

She raised her eyes and replied in a clear voice, as though but one word were needed to exculpate her:

"He said that I must not listen to the white fathers and that it was n't a sin, because we loved each other with such great love."

She spoke again the name she had pronounced a little while before, and this time with a sort of warm devoutness, looking up at Father Flanagan with an air of innocent triumph. He asked:

"Who said that?"

For the third time she repeated the name, adding:

"That old man. He is very old and he has seen many things."

Father Flanagan took up the syllables, one after another, and asked: "What does that name mean?"

This time she hesitated a little, sought her words carefully, and ended by translating slowly, with several pauses:

""He-who-sees-the-gods.' He said it was not a sin, because we loved one another so much."

Timmy was strumming on the window-pane, pretending not to hear; in the street periods of silence alternated with the distant squawking of a drunken sailor and the thin scuffle of sandals on the sidewalk. In the little room of the dispensary the gas was burning bravely, as though ambitious also to do its bit of good in the world, by its light, perhaps, attracting some shivering Oriental from afar, to give him a feeble illusion of warmth and sunshine. And near the fire, from which little still-born flames still sprang, Father Flanagan was engaged in a strange combat against the powers of darkness for the possession of the still pagan soul of Taoufa.

She was tightly wrapped now in her shawl, jealously and fearfully clutching the corners of it in her hand, as though to protect herself against all the cold things that surrounded her: the fog, the humid dreary wind, the freezing ooze of the streets, and these pitiless laws that the white father was trying to impose on her. Now and again she bent over, drawing her shoulders together, placing her bandaged hand conspicuously on her breast, raising eyes full of childish distress and entreaty toward the priest. At one moment she would stare at the fire and obstinately shake her head; then again she would assume an air of assurance, almost of defiance, and invoke an authority so lofty that it cast a kind of protecting shadow over all that she, Taoufa, might do, counter

that it was not wrong, because they loved one another so much. When she repeated this, she seemed to believe herself acquitted in advance, and received all reproaches with the air of a martyr. He-Who-Sees-the-Gods

was so old that there was no one in the island who could remember having known him when he was not old, and he was so full of wisdom that, once he had been consulted, no one would dream of disobeying him. It was long, long since he had ceased to work and walk about like other men; even while still on the island he would sit all day beside the great stone monuments built by the heroes and the gods of other times. Those heroes and those gods he saw, and he heard their voices. When one asked counsel of him, he would wait, before giving answer, until the gods had come at his call, to enlighten him with wisdom beyond the wisdom of men; and those who consulted him stood at a respectful distance while the invisible powers assembled round him, imparting their will to him through mysterious and awesome signs. And when at last he let his counsels be heard, they were so just and wise that, surely, only the voice of the immortals could have dictated them.

Even here, in the heart of the land without sun, a land ruled by morose, gloomy, bad-tempered gods, it seemed, he remained all the day sunk in mysterious contemplation, and nothing could trouble his peace.

When the fathers out there had sought to speak to him about their god, he had replied that the deity they spoke of had never been among those

who came to hold counsel with him; and even the most docile of the white fathers' pupils and the most faithful believers of the new religion had agreed among themselves that the white God must be too young for a man of an age so prodigious, and that it was better to leave him in peace among the gods of his youth, who had so long since left the earth.

Father Flanagan listened, his eyes never leaving the brown face mysteriously lighted by reflections from the fire, and he was saddened at seeing so clearly that she had become again a little idolatrous savage, and that perhaps, at bottom, she had never been anything else. The pious teachings and efforts of devoted missionaries, the lessons unwearyingly repeated to a great ring of simple-hearted children "out there" on the margin of the world, had been so quickly effaced! They had left no more traces than the water that the bright sun drew in fine steam from the long tresses of Taoufa's sisters as they played after the bath on the wide beaches strewn with scurrying, rose-tinted crabs. The commands of God and the church weighed nothing at all in the balance, because, on the other side of the scales, an idolatrous old man had let a kind of heathen absolution fall.

Suddenly he said:

"If He-Who-Sees-the-Gods is still a pagan, there is barely time for him to learn the truth and hear of the true God before being summoned before Him. Where do you live, Taoufa?"

Taoufa turned on him the rapid glance of a tracked animal and hid her face in her shawl. When he repeated his question, she replied in a terrified voice:

"We live in Pennyfields, Father, in

the house beside the shop of Yum-TutWah. But you must not come. The two men who are there-you must let them die in peace, Father! He who is my husband now, and who is going to die so soon, because the cold has crept into his breast, he says that if I were not there, I, whom he loves so much, the cold would creep into his heart and his blood would stop flowing. And He-Who-Sees-the-Gods, he is so old, Father! If you tell him that his gods are not the true gods, he will surely die."

Her look of frantic supplication wavered under the priest's eyes. In a firm, resolute voice, he replied:

"Better to die for having seen the truth, Taoufa, than to live in error. Did n't the fathers out yonder teach you that, or have you forgotten everything? I am going to Him-WhoSees-the-Gods this very night to show him the true God before it is too late."

Taoufa was gone, and Father Flanagan was taking his overcoat down from the hook in order to follow her. Into his pocket he put a crucifix, some pious leaflets, and a lithograph showing negroes, Polynesians, and Asiatics kneeling at the feet of the Saviour. Then to his nephew, who had remained near the door, pressing his forehead against the pane, he said:

"A little heathen, Timmy. That's all she is at bottom, a poor little heathen, who would need to be converted every day. And that other heathen who is with her, the young one, would be better off at the hospital if he is sick, far better off! Would n't he, Timmy?"

"Yes-I suppose so," Timmy slowly

"And yet," the priest continued, "these brown folk are easier to influence than the yellow races. They're barbarians, I'll grant you, but tender-hearted barbarians. They can be reached, first, by appealing to their sénses, by showing them Him Who died for them as for us, and by telling them about His death in such fashion as to make them understand how greatly He loved them.

"A holy father told me once, long years ago, that he went to a Pacific island where no other missionary had ever been seen, and that on the very first day he gathered the folk there about him, and told them, through an interpreter, and as simply as though it were but a tale, the life and death of Christ, and the torments He had endured for love of us. Even before he had finished, all the women were weeping and lamenting, and asking if He were really dead; and when he showed them the crucifix and told them that this was the image of the Saviour, one of the women implored him, with tears, to take Our Lord down from the cross that was so hard for His poor flesh, and let Him rest on their mats.

"And that, Timmy, is why we, far more unmistakably than others, are called of God to address these people and touch their hearts. Those others must laboriously expound a colorless faith, all set in words; but we can place before the very eyes of the poor heathen the semblance of Him they must adore. When they see from the agony on His face and from the wounds of His body all that He has endured for them, they always come to love Him, like savages, perhaps, but

As he was going out, he suddenly stopped and turned around.

"It just occurs to me, Timmy," said he "that man who's so sick-you had better come, too." Timmy gave a shrug, and without a word picked up his bag and followed him.

As they crossed West India Dock Road, Father Flanagan was thinking aloud:

"In Pennyfields, the house next to Yum-Tut-Wah's shop; a woman who's nothing but a child, a dying man, and an idolatrous old heathen beset by his hallucinations; and all three come from the Southern seas, God knows how or why. London is a queer place, Timmy. He-Who-Sees-the-Gods

Poor heretics! There 's barely time, but he will set his eyes on the true God once at least before he dies."

$ 4

When they knocked at the door of the house next to Yum-Tut-Wah's shop, there was a sound of footsteps in the hall and on the stairs, then silence, and Taoufa opened the door. Speechless, she looked at them with great, terrified eyes and led the way up the stairs.

They

On the landing a half-open door was noisily slammed shut; in closing it blew into the hall a puff of bluish and acrid smoke, heavily pungent. Taoufa opened another door. stepped into a small bare room, filled with suffocating air, where for weeks the poisons of burning gas had been accumulating. The furnishings consisted of ragged mats, squares of carpet worn to the very warp, and a little tin trunk that served as a table. From a pallet that had been pulled out to the very middle of the room,