"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.
"Then enter into paradise," Margaret said softly.
"You mean--" the sick girl asked, incredulously.
"I mean that I am going to take you to my home if you will go, and let you have your little Louis with you there."
The woman caught her hand and kissed it passionately. Then with quick alarm she asked, "But madam--the lady? Would she be willing for him to come to me?"
"Perhaps she will not want to take him when she knows his mother's sin."
"She will hold him all the more tenderly because of what his mother has suffered."
"She is not very good," said Margaret, smiling down at her, "but to your boy she promises she will never be anything but kind. My poor girl, will you trust her?"
A sudden light broke upon the sick woman.
"You?" she cried. "You?--who heard it all, and took my hand--and understood? You?"
A look of awe and then of peace ineffable stole over her face.
"Oh, madam! _now_ I know God has forgiven me!"
Margaret's action in taking a dying woman into her home that she might give her the blessedness of being with her child while life lasted excited little comment. Indeed it was known to but few persons. Social life in the capital city is an unstable thing. Congressional circles change; army and navy people move away; there are the "ins" and the "outs" with every administration; and fortunes rise and fall there as elsewhere. Margaret found her world greatly narrowed when she came back to Washington after years of absence. Besides, the few friends who were closest to her had become accustomed now to expect the unusual. It is the beauty of an unconventional life which keeps within the proprieties that when one has made it definitely clear that she intends to follow her own lead she finds herself by that act lifted above the realm of harassing criticism.