“Do you really mean it?” the girl whispered, her eyes fastened on the face opposite in absolute wonder and doubt; “you really mean to give me all this--and you want nothing?” Margaret smiled with stiff lips. “Nothing!” The pinched, childlike features of the stranger quivered; it seemed as if the frozen sensibilities were melting under this touch of common humanity. Suddenly she burst into an agony of tears, slipping down upon the stairs, her slender shabby figure racked with sobs. “He heard me!” she cried, “there is a God!” Margaret looked at her strangely. “Do you think so?” she asked vaguely, with parched lips, “do you believe in God?” “Yes,” the girl cried, clasping her hands, “I prayed--oh, God, how I prayed! It seemed as if He didn’t hear me, no help came and I couldn’t pay; I couldn’t pay, and they didn’t believe me any more because I’d failed--you don’t know, you’ve never failed like that! I thought God didn’t care, that He had forgotten--but now--” she rose from her knees, her face still wet with tears but singularly changed, “I shan’t have to do it!” she cried, “here’s enough to begin all over again, I can go on, I’m saved! He heard! Don’t you believe it? Don’t you see it must be so?” she persisted, unconsciously catching at Margaret’s draperies and her thin toil-worn hand closing on their richness. “For you, yes,” the older woman replied slowly; “good heavens, I never knew how much money meant before!” she murmured, passing her hand over her eyes again, “and you think--God heard you--_God?_” “He sent you!” the girl cried, exultantly, wildly happy; “oh, yes, I’m sure of it--oh, God bless you!” A strange expression passed over Margaret’s face. She leaned back against the wall, pressing her hand to her heart. Then, as the girl still sobbed softly, she touched her shoulder. “Open the door,” she said quietly, “I--I must go, can you help me? I’m a little dizzy.” The young woman sprang to her and put out her arm eagerly. “Let me help you; oh, I’d do anything for you!” Margaret smiled, a wan little smile that made her haggard brilliant face weirdly sad. “It is nothing. There, the air from the outside makes me well again, this place is choking!” The stranger walked with her to the corner, eager to help her, to call a cab, to put her on the cars, but as Margaret’s faintness passed she refused, putting aside her protests with firm dismissal. “No, no, I can go home,” she said bravely; “good-bye, I’m glad I could help you.” “Oh, let me go with you, let me do something!” the girl appealed to her eagerly.