She sat so long without speaking that he began nervously to dread a break-down or an outburst such as she used to give way to. He had no need to fear. The woman before him was not the girl of those tempestuous days. No school develops us so swiftly as sorrow's school. With the little nunnery maid who talked with Guinevere, she had learned "to cry her cry in silence, and have done." "But it would help other women, in years to come," she said at last in a voice that thrilled with feeling--"women who cannot fight for themselves--" the woman of the street was before her--"who do not have a friend like you to fight for them?" "Unquestionably. If that bill becomes a law no other woman in this District will ever stand where you do to-day pleading for her child." She stood up then with eyes shining and head thrown back. "Then let me do what I can," she cried. "This is not for one woman but for many." Oddly enough, as he looked at her, there came into his mind two pictures he had seen on her own walls,--one, the old familiar one of the sitting mother clasping to her heart the Divine Child as if she would keep Him forever within her sheltering arms; the other, with face illumined and a larger vision that took in the whole world's needs, holding the Christ-child up, an offering to humanity. The woman before him might have been a "chair madonna" yesterday; to-day she was a "Sistine." CHAPTER XXXVII THE RED PAPER Spring was come. Once more had been wrought the old, old miracle which is ever new, and every tree-crowned hill and nestling valley around Washington was singing the resurrection song. Even the green grass at Margaret's feet and the hyacinths and daffodils as she moved among them seemed to say: "Lo, the winter is past; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land." There was a note of jubilance in it all. Perhaps she was feeling still the influence of the Easter "Allelujahs" of yesterday; perhaps it was that the mellowness of the warm spring air had somehow got into her very soul this morning and swept away the clouds of doubt; or possibly it was only that Margaret was young, and "hope springs eternal." Whatever the cause, the girl looked out upon the world of budding nature around her with an ecstacy which had its overtone of sadness, as all such ecstacies have for natures like hers.... It was a beautiful world! a beautiful world! And it would not be long now.