"Please put the north room to air. Miss Gerould arrives late in the afternoon--I think there isn't a waste-paper basket in the room, so, Dora, will you hunt one up, and see to all the electric bulbs, won't you? And towels, the little embroidered ones----" Sard waited, half contemplating, thinking of reproof for the back turned so rudely and obstinately toward her direction, then she looked at the slight, slender figure in its gray gown, the apron tied so carefully and delicately, the capless, pretty hair, and was conscious suddenly of someone young like herself. Through this veil of youth she saw what kind of sorrow it was that bowed the head of the woman standing there; something that she did not know was the most glorious passion in the world beat up through Sard's heart into her brain; it was the passion for humanity, for justice and fairness for all. "Why should I be giving orders to her when she is suffering? Supposing Dunstan were in trouble and--and shame, and I had to take orders from the very people that----Dora--Dora," the girl persisted, "is there nothing I can do?" There was no answer, only dry coughing sobs. The cook turned. "Ah, don't bother your head with it all, dear. It ain't nothing to you--only, Gawd help the poor thing! Er course," said the cook somewhat bitterly, "we're all under this law; the boy done wrong; he done awful, and they'll be able to prove it against him, and your papa--well," the cook sighed, "only he's young, a rill smart curly-headed young feller and his chanst is gorn." Then cook, with a curious rising howl, turned away herself. Wiping her eyes, the young waitress stonily piling up the silver on the tray, let drop a fork. The girl stood there looking at it. Sard tried to comfort her. "It--it is Human Sorrow," she said awkwardly. "I think we--we don't understand sorrow as well as we ought to and I am quite powerless but Miss Aurelia and I care, Dora." The girl said it tremulously; already she was feeling the awful gulf between a person who suffers tragedy and that other who stands by longing to help. Also Sard knew a kind of shame--for it seemed treachery to her father and the equity he maintained, to say more. What could words do? It was Sard's first experience of the great naked fact of human sorrow and shame; she knew that the only person who could help Dora would be someone who had been through a wave of tragedy like hers. "Words," thought Sard hotly, "are disgusting. We bandy them about and pile them up like money. We exchange them like coin of the realm." The young girl, clean and defiant of emotion as a young animal, had no mature power, that amazing power borne through sorrow and sympathy, the strange power of the healing touch, else she would have touched Dora's bowed head, put a comforting hand on the heaving shoulder. She stood silent, then once more said, helplessly, "Dora, don't you believe me, that I do truly care?"