Amazed, John falls on his knees beside the bed. The poor woman opens her eyes and looks up in his face, startled, frightened. “My poor mother!” John murmurs--he does not comprehend beyond the one fact that she suffers agony. Out from the rug struggle the poor burned hands and clasp him in a fierce embrace as though she would never let him go again. For years her heart has yearned for him, yet fear of his reproach has kept her aloof. Now the pent-up emotion of a lifetime breaks forth. Her lips move as if uttering a prayer, and then exhausted nature again causes her to swoon. The doctor comes and drives them all from the room save Samson and the housekeeper, who is a trained nurse. All the guests have gone but Aleck, and with John he sits in the deserted parlor, talking, while Dorothy changes her dress upstairs. John is feverish with impatience, and, as best he can, Aleck tells him the sad story of the past. It causes him intense agony, but the depths of his heart are stirred with love for the poor mother who so bitterly paid the penalty the world exacts for a single sin. When Craig describes with enthusiasm how his friend Wycherley saved the poor woman from the burning tenement John is running over with gratitude toward the actor. Indeed, all of them have pretty much the same feeling for him. Then Dorothy joins them, looking very sweet, Craig thinks, in her dark robe, though the color has left her cheeks, and a look of sadness and fear haunts her eyes. While they talk in subdued tones Samson Cereal joins them. His face is not as of old--the stern lines are softened, the eyes tender. It is with a trembling hand that he draws Dorothy into his embrace. “It was a narrow escape, my darling. Only for her heroism you must have been lost to me. I hardly know what to say. God in his goodness has, I trust, forgiven me. This is the way he has chosen to open my eyes. Adela sinned, and it was right that we should part, but I have been wicked to keep alive in my heart the elements of bitterness and anger, instead of forgiving the wrong of the past. Now the scales are removed and I see my lamentable fault. Her last days shall be passed in peace,” he says brokenly. “Oh, father! is she then fatally burned--has she given her life for me?” cries Dorothy. “It is not that, my child. Her burns, though of a painful nature, are not fatal; but she is the victim of disease--consumption has claimed her for its own. God knows how it was contracted; perhaps through a lack of the necessaries of life, or it may be through nursing those who suffered from that terrible disease, for she tells me she has been a nurse in the hospitals, and through several yellow fever epidemics down South, trying to wash out her sin by doing good. The doctor has told me that she cannot live through another winter. Dorothy, shall this home be hers to the end?” “A thousand times, yes, father; and it shall be my pleasure to wait upon her as though she were my own mother.”