Gaspingly she lay back on the pillows, but her eyes held mine.
"Promise--"

"I promise I will not--forget." Before God and a dying woman I was
pledging protection for a homeless child. My voice broke and then
steadied. "I promise--and I will watch."

As if that which held had snapped, the tossing head lay quiet, and
out of the face fear faded, and into it, as softly as widens dawn at
break of day, came peace. The sobbing in the corner of the room had
ceased, and through the thin walls I could hear Selwyn's low tones as
he told stumblingly to the child a story that was keeping her quiet,
and I knew he, too, was on new thresholds; he, too, was entering
unknown worlds.

"Tell her--" Flame-spent, the eyes again opened and this time looked
at Miss White. "Tell her--why I--don't want-- They mean--to be
good--but--people like that--don't know how--people like us--"

Martha White thrust her handkerchief up her sleeve, cleared her
throat, and straightened her wide and rustling apron. "She's been
trying to tell me all day that she didn't want Nora to be put in an
orphan asylum, and yet there's nobody to take her. All her people
are too poor to add another child to their families." She came
closer and lowered her voice that it might reach no one but me, and
with her shoulders made movement toward the bed, with her hands to
the man and woman still close together in tearless silence in the
corner. "You know how people like that are. They judge everything
by the few cases that come within their knowledge, and--"