"He don't care much, I guess, seeing the use he 's going to put the money to. He 's hired a farm for a term of years, up in the Province of Quebec, somewhere near the St. Lawrence, with some good buildings on it; and when he knows of somebody that needs just such a home to pick up in he is going to send 'em up there. And the conscience money is going to help out. This is the place where you 're to help the Scotchwoman, as I understand it. Now that's all I can tell you, except the wages is twenty-five dollars a month besides room and keep. I s'pose you 'll go for that?" "Go! I can't wait to get away; I 'd like to go to-morrow, but I must stay two or three weeks longer in the library. But, I don't understand--how am I to accept the place without notification? And you don't know even the name of the Scotch-woman?" "I 'll tend to that. My girl writes all the letters for me, and the letters to this place go in the care of the 'Seigniory of Lamoral', whatever that may mean. They get there all right. You come round here within a week, and I 'm pretty sure that the directions will be here with the passage money." I felt my face flush from my chin to the roots of my hair; and I knew, moreover, that Delia Beaseley was reading that sign with keen accustomed eyes; she knew there was sore need for just that help. III Do you who are reading these life-lines know what it is to be alone in a world none too mindful of anyone, even if he be somebody? Never to experience after the day's work the rest and joy of home-coming to one's own? Do you know what it is to acknowledge no tie of blood that binds one life to another and makes for a common interest in joy or sorrow? To ask yourself: Do I belong here? To wonder, perhaps, why, in fact, you are here? To feel your isolation in a crowded thoroughfare, your remoteness in the midst of an alien family life? To feel, in truth, a stranger on this earth? If you have known this, if you have experienced this, or, even if, at times, you have been only dimly conscious of this for another, then you will understand these my life-lines, and it may be they will interpret something of yourself to yourself. Delia Beaseley walked with me as far as the Bowery. There I insisted on her leaving me. I assured her I was used to the streets of New York in the evening. However, she waited with me for the car. When I said good night to the woman, who twenty-six years ago saved another woman, "one who had missed her footing",--those words seem to ring constantly in my ears,--in order that I, Marcia Farrell, that stranger's child, might become the living fact I am, I began to realize that during the last hour I had been acting a part, and acting it well; that, without sacrificing the truth at any stage of the evening's developments, I had been able to obtain all this information, which pointed to a crisis in my life, yet had given but little return in kind. I felt justified in withholding it.