Mrs. Davis seemed stupefied; she looked up into those beautiful
distressed brown eyes, and her dry lips moved.

"You don't think," she said, in a hoarse, hurried whisper--"you're not
saying--_Tom isn't in hell_?"

"I know he is not, I know it! Justice? it would be the most frightful
injustice, because, don't you see," she went on eagerly, "it is just as
you said,--Tom had no chance; so God could not punish him eternally for
being what he had to be, born as he was, and living as he did. I don't
know anything about people's souls when they die,--I mean about going to
heaven,--but I do know this: as long as a soul lives it has a chance for
goodness, a chance to turn to God. There is no such place as hell!"

"But--but"--the widow faltered, "he was cut off in his sins. The preacher
wouldn't say but he was lost!" Her words were a wail of despair.

Helen groaned; she was confronted by her loyalty to John, yet the
suffering of this hopeless soul! "Listen," she said, taking Mrs. Davis's
hands in hers, and speaking slowly and tenderly, while she held the weak,
shifting eyes by her own steady look, "listen. I do not know what the
preacher would say, but it is not true that Tom is lost; it is not true
that God is cruel and wicked; it is not true that, while Tom's soul
lives, he cannot grow good."

The rigid look in the woman's face began to disappear; her hopeless
belief was shaken, not through any argument, but by the mere force of the
intense conviction shining in Helen's eyes.