She thought of her poor. There was a young girl in a home for the blind, to whom she read on Sunday evenings. There was an asylum for the shelterless in Acker Street. She would look over the inmates and then ask help for them from charitable men and women who had come to expect her on this errand. In Moabit she had by chance come upon a woman with a baby at her breast; both were near starvation. She had saved them, had procured work and shelter for the woman, and taken the child to a home for infants. But these external things did not suffice her. She sought the establishment of human relations and the gift of confidence. She wrote letters for people, mediated between those whom life was threatening to divide, and thus, by giving her very self, she had also earned the fanatical devotion of that young mother. She knew the names of many who were in great danger, and she knew many houses in which want was bitter. Once her interest had been excited by some children cowering in a corner during a socialistic women’s meeting. Another time chance had led her into the home of a striker. She had been present when a poor woman had been dragged from the canal, and hastened to the suicide’s family. On her way from giving a lesson to an errand of charity in a hospital, she had met an expelled student named Jacoby at the greasy table of a coffee-house, where he had begged her to meet him. Bad company and want threatened him with destruction. She had argued with him concerning his beliefs and principles and friends, and persuaded him into new courage and another attempt. In the street that ran parallel to her own, there lived a machinist by the name of Heinzen with his family. An accident in a factory had robbed the man of both his legs, and the frightful nervous shock had reduced him to a paralytic condition. He usually lay in a state of convulsive rigour. One day a neighbour who was plagued with rheumatism had visited him; and this man had become aware of the fact that if Heinzen touched any part of his body the pain there was alleviated at once. The rumour had spread like fire. People talked of the miracle of magnetic healing, and a great many sick men and women came to Heinzen to be cured. He would take no money from them; but those who believed--and their numbers increased daily--brought his wife food and other gifts. Ruth had heard of this. She had been in Heinzen’s flat. She was filled by what she had seen, and gave Christian a vivid account of her impressions. Christian looked at her wonderingly. “Ruth,” he said, “little Ruth, those are such difficult matters. If you once begin to be absorbed by them, life itself is too short. I always thought that if one succeeded in quite exhausting but a single human soul, one would know a great deal and could well be content. But life is like the sea. Don’t you have to think of it every minute? And how is it that you are always so full of brightness? I don’t understand that.”