Margaret touched the heated face with cool, soft fingers.
"What do these tears mean?" she said gently. "They come from a heart that is becoming soft, if it is not soft already. Yes, I feel it too. We ought to be drawn out of ourselves. It is necessary to our happiness, to the healthy life of our souls. We grow morbid here in our solitude, with our thoughts toward inward. Since my darling little one was taken from me I too have been getting hard, Jane, or perhaps you and I might have understood each other better. But I thank God there is still time before us. You must let me into the secrets of your life. I will tell you what my sufferings have been, that there may be a true sympathy between us; then we must look out from our own sorrows to the great world of suffering around us, and whether the future bring happiness or grief, it need not be altogether bereft of the treasures of love and sympathy."
Jane listened, and her tears ceased. The words of Margaret were like oil on the troubled waters. They brought hope, they suggested possible comfort in a future that but a few moments before had been black with the utter blackness of despair.
For humanity is not ever entirely bad. I think no living, breathing creature can be said to be hopelessly depraved. Sin, it is said, brings its own punishment, but the heaviest punishment sin can bring is the agonizing suffering it inflicts upon the soul. To be without hope of that beautiful attribute we call goodness would be misery unimaginable.
Yet this was what Jane had been feeling that morning, and Margaret's words were like rays of light pointing to a possible redemption. "If I'd aught in the whole world to care about," she said, "I'd try and be better, but—"
And then she stopped suddenly, for Jane was eminently practical, and an idea had flashed in upon her brain.
"Have you no friends?" asked Margaret.
"I was thinking of the child," she said.
"What child?"