Angela did not mind. It was mostly goodnatured laughter, and many of the laughers ended by lending willing hands and hearts to the cause. It was wonderful how the news spread through the city's purlieus that here was a sanctuary into which cold, hunger, and fatigue dared not intrude; a place which the lowest might enter and be made welcome, and go unquestioned, his personal rights as carefully respected as though he were one of the Four Hundred. That was Angela's theory. No man, woman, or child should be _compelled_ to anything. First make their bodies comfortable, then surround them with ennobling influences and examples, entertain them, arouse them, stimulate them, hold out the helping hand, _and leave the rest to God_. "They shall not even be _compelled_ to be clean!" she said, laughing. "If the beautiful clean bathrooms and clean clothing do not tempt them to cleanliness, then so be it! I will have no rules; only influences. You will see!" And people did see, and wondered. Sometimes, on warm, pleasant evenings, the spacious, cheerful hall, with its tables and chairs, would be almost empty; but on nights like that on which this story opens, a dark, cold December night, the seats were apt to be well filled, mostly with slatternly, hard-featured women, and dull-faced children, who sat staring stolidly about, while the music and speaking went on; half stupefied by the warmth and tranquillity so foreign to their lives. Outside, a dismal sleet was falling, but from the open door of the vestibule a great sheet of light fell upon the wet pavement, and above it glowed a transparency bearing the words: "A Merry Christmas to all! Come in!" It was while the singing was going on, led by a high, sweet girl's voice, that a human figure came hobbling out from a side street, and stopped short at the very edge of the lighted space. A woman by her dress, an old, old woman, with a seamed, blotched face; an ugly, human wreck, all torn and battered and discolored by the storms of life. Such was old Marg--"Luny Marg," as she was called in the haunts that knew her best. Her history? She had forgotten it herself, very likely, and there was no one to know or care--no one in the wide world to care if she should at any moment be trampled to death, or slip from the dock into the black river. The garret which lodged her would find another tenant; the children of the gutters another target for their missiles. Not that she was worse than others--only that she was old and ugly and sharp of tongue, and the world--even _her_ world--has no use for such as she. For some time this forlorn creature continued to hover on the edge of the lighted space. The sleet had become snow, and already a thin white film covered the pavement, promising "a white Christmas," and the cold increased from moment to moment.