Some lines of William Watson's kept saying themselves over and over to me in thought, as I watched those throngs; as I listened to the glare of street bands, the grinding of hurdy-gurdies, and heard the flow of street life, which is the life, of the foreign East Side;
"Momentous to himself, as I to me,
Hath each man been that ever woman bore;
Once, in a lightning-flash of sympathy,
I felt this truth, an instant, and no more."
"Momentous to himself." Oh yes—not a soul among those thousands who was not "momentous to himself", no matter how low soever fallen! "Momentous to himself"—I watched the throngs, and understood.
I made my way into V—- Court, unafraid and unmolested. Delia Beaseley opened the door. At sight of her all the pent-up emotion of weeks threatened to find vent.
"Delia, it is I, Marcia Farrell—"
"Oh, my dear, my dear," she cried, as she drew me into the hall under the dim light. "It is good to see you again! But what is it?" she asked anxiously, lifting my hat from my face. "Are you sick?"
I could not answer her. She led me into the back room I remembered so well. There, as once before, she pushed me gently into the rocking-chair. She removed my hat and brought a fan.
"What is it, my dear? Can't you tell me?"
Oh, how many times, during her life of helpfulness, she must have asked that question of homeless girls and despairing women!
"Delia," I began; then I hesitated. Should I tell her, or carry in silence my trouble about with me? Before I could speak again, she had her arms—those motherly arms I had felt before—around me; my head was on her shoulder; my arms about her neck. I sobbed out my story, and she comforted me as only a woman, who has suffered, can comfort.