She stopped. Her handkerchief, twisted into a tight cord, was knotted nervously. "I can't talk of it. I had waited so long, I wanted a child, a little child of my own, that there was nothing I would not have suffered. But to go down into the valley of the shadow--and come back with empty arms--" She drew in her breath, but her eyes were dry. "Even Mr. Burnham didn't understand. He was distressed and disappointed, but because I got well nothing else seemed to matter much. But he didn't know--no man can know-- the awful ache in your heart, the awful emptiness of your arms when your baby is taken out of them. One day everything in me seemed to stop. I couldn't feel, or think, or talk. Mr. Burnham must have been frightened, for he got up suddenly and left the room. After a while he came back, then left again, and a few minutes later the door opened and closed, and Mary Cary was inside. As she came toward me I saw she had on no coat or hat. And then she was on her knees by my bed, and I was in her arms and held close to her heart. "Oh, I can't tell--" Her voice broke in a half-sob she tried to smother. "No one can ever know what it meant to me, but I knew she understood, and suddenly the something that had been tight and cruel snapped, and for the first time tears came." "I understand, child. I understand." Miss Gibbie patted the twisting hands softly. "Every woman has a corner in her heart she keeps covered. And the thing in life that's hardest is to hold your head up and smile and hide the ache. But it must be held up. That's the woman's part. I'm glad you and Mary are good friends. She tells me you and Mr. Burnham have been a great help to her, and she needs the help you and he can give. I'm about as much use as a shoestring for a buttoned boot. Never could stand smeary people with bad teeth. But possibly I wouldn't take a bath every day, either, if I didn't have a clean tub and hot water, with good soap and towels. Mary says I wouldn't. And if I had to cook, and mind babies, and make clothes, and live with a tobacco-chewer and pipe-smoker, and get up before light and hurry him off to a factory, and wash and dress the children for school, and then clean and cook some more, maybe I wouldn't be-- quite like I am now. Maybe I wouldn't--" "I am very sure of it." Mrs. Burnham's laugh was half a sigh. "Poor people make us dreadfully mad at times, and we call them shiftless and improvident and lazy, and some of them are. They are ignorant and untrained. But the woman who is doing the hardest, bravest work in the world to-day is the wife of the workingman, struggling to be respectable and make her children so on wages that often aren't human, much less Christian. When I build a monument it's to be to 'Unknown Mothers.'" She got up and pushed back her chair. "When are you going away, Miss Gibbie? I'm so glad you are making Mary go with you." She hesitated and with the tip of her parasol outlined the pattern of the rug at her feet.