basket contained a squirming mass of gray fur, and stooping to look
at it more attentively, he found that the fur belonged to a number of
small animals, huddled asleep on the fragment of a red and white plaid
shawl. He liked the woman's face and he liked, too, the little creatures
in the basket; and more than this he felt the great need of helping as
the one means to bridge the extreme spiritual isolation in which he
stood. To give one's self! Was not this final surrender of the soul the
beginning of all faith as of all love?

"I believe that you need help," he said, in the winning voice which had
always had a strange power to open out the hearts of others, "and I know
that I need to give it."

In the midst of the crude noises of the street, surrounded by the
screaming newsboys and the clanging cars, he saw that she paused for an
instant to cast a quick, frightened glance about her.

"If you'll believe what I say," she replied, in a voice which had gained
the assurance of a heartfelt conviction, "I was just praying for help to
come, but somehow it always seems to take one's breath clean away when
there's an answer. I've been trying to sell some of the little
creatures," she went on, "but they don't go well to-day and I guess Jim
won't be able to hold out till I get the money for his funeral."

"And Jim is your husband?" he asked quietly.

"I married him more than thirty years ago," she answered, stooping to
wipe her eyes with a hard rub on the sleeve of her jacket, "and he was
always a good worker until this sickness came. I've never known him to
miss a day's work so long as he had his health," she added proudly, "and
that, too, when so many other husbands were soaking themselves in
drink."

"And he's ill now?" asked Adams, as she paused.

"He's been dying steadily for a week, sir," she answered with the simple
directness of the grief which takes account only of the concrete fact,
"and I've been working day and night to make up his burial money by the
time he needs it. If he'd only manage to last a day or two longer I
might lay up enough to keep him out of the paupers' lot," she finished
with a kind of awful cheerfulness.

It was this cheerfulness, he found, glimmering like some weird
death-fire over the actual horror, which made his realisation of the
tragedy the more poignant, and lent even a certain distinction to the
poverty which she described. Here, indeed, was the supreme vulgarity of
suffering--and bef