I made my way into V--- Court, unafraid and unmolested. Delia Beaseley opened the door. At sight of her all the pent-up emotion of weeks threatened to find vent. "Delia, it is I, Marcia Farrell--" "Oh, my dear, my dear," she cried, as she drew me into the hall under the dim light. "It is good to see you again! But what is it?" she asked anxiously, lifting my hat from my face. "Are you sick?" I could not answer her. She led me into the back room I remembered so well. There, as once before, she pushed me gently into the rocking-chair. She removed my hat and brought a fan. "What is it, my dear? Can't you tell me?" Oh, how many times, during her life of helpfulness, she must have asked that question of homeless girls and despairing women! "Delia," I began; then I hesitated. Should I tell her, or carry in silence my trouble about with me? Before I could speak again, she had her arms--those motherly arms I had felt before--around me; my head was on her shoulder; my arms about her neck. I sobbed out my story, and she comforted me as only a woman, who has suffered, can comfort. "Let me stay a little while with you, Delia, till I get work again." "Stay with me! Bless your heart, I couldn't let you go if you wanted to. Here 's my Jane--she 's out now--ready to drop with the work and the heat; we 've had a long spell of it, and I not knowing where to turn for help just now, for I want her to go away on a vacation; she needs it. Just you stay right here with me, and I 'll pack Jane off to-morrow." "Have you--is any body with you?" I asked. "Yes." She nodded significantly. "There 's two of 'em on my hands now. One's got through, and the other is expecting soon. Both of 'em can't see the use of living, and Jane 's about worn out." "You will let me help? I can do something, if it's only the housework." "I can tend to that." She spoke decidedly. "What I want is to have you round 'em, comforting 'em, cheerin' 'em--" "_I_ comforting, _I_ cheering, Delia?" She nodded emphatically. "Yes, my dear, just that. Your work is cut out for you right here, for a few weeks anyway. You come upstairs with me now and set with one of 'em, and give her a bowl of gruel--I was just going to come up with one from the kitchen when you rung,--while I get Jane's things together; she 'll be in by ten. She 's over to one of the Settlement Houses helping out to-night." Somehow, on hearing this account of Jane's activity--tired Jane who could help and rescue at home, and then go out to the Settlement House to give of her best till ten at night--my own life dwindled into insignificance. The true spirit of the great city entered into me. I felt the power of it for good. I felt its altruism; I realized its deepest significance; and I saw wherein lay my own salvation from selfish brooding, from forbidden craving, from morbid thinking. "Let me have Jane's work," I said.