"I heard of that case yesterday," Bethany said, when he had finished. "I know the nurse, Belle Carleton. The baby died, and they took the mother to the Deaconess Hospital. She has typhoid fever. Belle told me of another experience she had. Her life is full of them. She was sent to a family where drunkenness was the cause of the poverty. The man had not had steady work for a year, because he was never sober more than a few days at a time. They lived in three rooms in the rear basement of a large tenement-house. Belle said, when she opened the door of the first room, it seemed the most forlorn place she had ever seen. There was a table piled full of dirty dishes, and a cooking-stove covered with ashes, on which stood a wash-boiler filled with half-washed clothes. The floor looked as if it had never known the touch of a broom. The odor of the boiling suds was sickening. A slatternly, half-grown girl, one of the neighbors, stood beside a leaky tub, washing as best she knew how. Four dirty, half-starved children were playing on the bare floor. Their mother was sick in the next room. I couldn't begin to repeat Belle's description of that bedroom, it was so filthy and infested with vermin. She said, when she saw all that must be done, that repulsive creature bathed, the dishes washed, and the floor scrubbed, a great loathing came over her. She felt that she could not possibly touch a thing in the room. She wanted to turn and run away from it all. I said to her, 'O, Belle, how could you force yourself to do such repulsive things?'" "What did she say?" exclaimed Herschel. Bethany's face reflected some of the tenderness that must have shone in Belle Carleton's, as she repeated her answer softly, "For Jesus' sake!" There was a long pause, which Herschel broke by saying: "And she staid there, I suppose, forced her shrinking hands into contact with what she despised, did the most menial services, from a sense of duty to a man whom she had never seen, who died centuries ago? Miss Hallam, how could she? I find it very hard to understand." "No, not from a sense of duty," corrected Bethany, "so much as love." "Well, for love then. What was there in this man of Nazareth to inspire such devotion after such a lapse of time? I understand how one might admire his ethical teaching, how one might even try to embody his precepts in a code to live by; but how he can inspire such sublime annihilation of self, surpasses my comprehension. He was no greater lawgiver than Moses, yet who makes such sacrifices for the love of Moses? Peter suffered martyrdom, and Paul; yet who is ready to lay down his life cheerfully and say, 'I do it for the sake of Peter--or Paul?'" "Mr. Herschel," said Bethany, looking up at him wistfully, "don't you see that it is no mere man who exercises such power; that he must be what he claimed--one with the Father?"