"Dear? O, madam, he is the very breath of life to me."
"And yet you cannot have him with you?"
"No." She said it very patiently. "The rules of both Hospital and Home forbid. But sometimes they bring him to me for a little while."
As the sad story to which she had listened had progressed, a determination had been taking form in Margaret De Jarnette's mind.
She bent over now and speaking slowly that the sick woman might take in her words, said,
"And would it make you very happy if you could have him all the time? If you could lie upon a couch in some pleasant, sunny room—a quiet house, we'll say, where you would not be disturbed—could have your little Louis in this room with you every day—to talk to you and lean against you as he talks—to have his playthings on the floor and play that you and he were this and that—perhaps sometimes when you were very well even to have his crib bed in your room, and tuck him in, and watch him go to sleep—could have his goodnight kiss and hear him say his prayers—" she drew the picture with the swift, sure strokes that mothers know—"if you could have all this and know that it would last until some night you'd fall asleep to waken on your mother's breast,—would it make you very happy?"
The woman looked at her with parted lips and shining eyes.
"Oh, madam!—It would be heaven!"
"Then enter into paradise," Margaret said softly.
"You mean—" the sick girl asked, incredulously.