"I might as well sit here and sew as go to bed and lie there. I shouldn't sleep," replied Maria, with the gentlest sadness conceivable. There was in it no shadow of complaining. Of late years all the fire of resistance had seemed to die out in the girl. She was unfailingly sweet, but nerveless. Often when she raised a hand it seemed as if she could not even let it fall, as if it must remain poised by some curious inertia. Still, she went to the shop every day and did her work faithfully. She pasted linings in shoes, and her slender little fingers used to fly as if they were driven by some more subtle machine than any in the factory. Often Maria felt vaguely as if she were in the grasp of some mighty machine worked by a mighty operator; she felt, as she pasted the linings, as if she herself were also a part of some monstrous scheme of work under greater hands than hers, and there was never any getting back of it. And always with it all there was that ceaseless, helpless, bewildered longing for something, she was afraid to think what, which often saps the strength and life of a young girl. Maria had never had a lover in her life; she had not even good comrades among young men, as her sister had. No man at that time would have ever looked twice at her, unless he had fallen in love with her, and had been disposed to pick her up and carry her along on the hard road upon which they fared together. Maria was half fed in every sense; she had not enough nourishing food for her body, nor love for her heart, nor exercise for her brain. She had no time to read, as she was forced to sew when out of the shop if she would have anything to wear. When at last she went up-stairs to bed, before Abby returned, she sat down by her window, and leaned her little, peaked chin on the sill and looked out. The stars were unusually bright for a summer night; the whole sky seemed filled with a constantly augmenting host of them. The scent of tobacco came to her from below. To the lonely girl the stars and the scent of the tobacco served as stimulants; she formed a forcible wish. "I wish," she muttered to herself, "that I was either an angel or a man." Then the next minute she chided herself for her wickedness. A great wave of love for God, and remorse for impatience and melancholy in her earthly lot, swept over her. She knelt down beside her bed and prayed. An exultation half-physical, half-spiritual, filled her. When she rose, her little, thin face was radiant. She seemed to measure the shortness of the work and woe of the world as between her thumb and finger. The joy of the divine filled all her longing. When Abby came home, who shared her chamber, she felt no jealousy. She only inquired whether she had gone quite home with Ellen. "Yes, I did," replied Abby. "I don't think it is safe for her to go past that lonely place below the Smiths'." "I'm glad you did," said Maria, with an angelic inflection in her voice.