There were tears in Mary's eyes as he concluded. She had been too long fed on unwholesome doctrine to be in any way influenced by his arguments. He had merely told her what she already knew too well, that such a belief as she professed--that truth--was an apple of Sodom, full of bitterness and sorrow; but, somehow, his kind words brought vividly before her the utterness of her desolation, and she said in mournful tones, "Oh, how wicked you would think me if you knew all my thoughts; how you would loathe me!" "Pray, don't say such a thing, Miss King," he exclaimed. "Whatever your opinions and doubts may be, you are not wicked. Do you know, I have often watched you in the hospital. I have taken great interest in you. I saw how sad and thoughtful you were, and I saw how kind you were to the sick--how patient, how sympathetic. I observed how you felt with their suffering, not in mere physical revolt at witnessing pain, but with a true woman's pity. No! I know you are not wicked." He spoke earnestly, with a deep feeling, the meaning of which could hardly be mistaken. Mary answered not a word. She was overawed by this man. She felt as if she could have sunk into the ground with her sense of shame and degradation. "What, this good man believes that _I_ am good," she thought. "He has faith in me--affection for me! He loves me for my kindness to the sick--me, that am training to be a murderess--me, a baby-killer! Oh, the horror of the thing--the despair of my position!" She realized bitterly how deep, how irreconcilable must be her estrangement from her race. "She must never know love--she must steel her heart--crush her sympathies, and, oh! she must never again trust herself to talk in confidence with her fellows, especially with this doctor." She could not speak with that choking sensation in her throat, so she walked on in silence. Her companion looked at her and perceived the tears glistening in her downcast eyes. The doctor had, of late, found himself constantly thinking tenderly of this lonely, sad-looking girl, whose only companion was the frivolous Susan. He had, to a certain extent, guessed the cause of her sorrow, living as she did with the half-insane atheist and revolutionist he knew Mrs. King to be. He felt a great pity for the beautiful unprotected creature, in whom he saw such sweet possibilities of love and all the graces and good qualities of woman. The love that was coming to him was deep and strong and fierce as was his nature, and the girl was beginning to divine this. No wonder that she was filled with dread when she knew that she had inspired such a feeling in such a man; for there lay that terrible secret between them, a secret whose nature he had so little suspected, when she warned him that he would loathe her, did he know it. She found that she was on the edge of a precipice, and felt a sick dizziness to see it, but also a painful fascination.