The girl's anger and passion flamed into her face.
"You don't know what it is you ask," she said. "I tell you, you don't know--I'm not a woman that you want here."
"Margaret, I do want you. I want you to feel that this is your home; and oh, my child, I want you to know that I am your friend--always and always your friend."
The girl's eyes were furious, yet piteous, like the eyes of an animal at bay; her passion had burned almost to frenzy.
"Know, then," she hissed, close to Mrs. Thorpe's face, "know, then, what it is that I must have! I tell you, I am a ruined woman--I must have--"
But Mrs. Thorpe put out her hand.
"Hush, Margaret," she said. "Do you think that I do not know? I do know, and, believe me, I know what you suffer! But oh, my child! How many, many who were dire distressed pressed close to the Healer's side--and never one was turned away."
Margaret scanned Mrs. Thorpe's face with a look that was terrible--keen as a lightning flash. For a moment the transfiguration of hope, desire, faith, lay in the dark depth of her eyes. Her face relaxed; the frenzy and passion died out of it and left it quivering with a new-born anguish. She threw herself prostrate on a couch and burst into a paroxysm of tears.
A woman's tears--a fallen woman's tears! The sacred pages that are so few, yet hold the record of all that guides the human family from the beginning to the end, had space for this, a fallen woman's tears. The sins, blood-red, that have been made like wool; as scarlet, that have become white as snow, washed in the fountain of penitent tears! And beating in divine cadence, sounding forever through the centuries, are the words of the great Forgiver of men:
"Go thy way and sin no more."