While Mrs. Pennybacker was thus effectively wielding the battle-ax that common sense and observation had laid ready at her hand, Margaret, bleeding on the field, was well-nigh ready to give up the fight. An ambushed foe had fallen upon her and borne her down, and before she could recover herself, Courage, who had been through it all her strong support and chiefest counselor, had turned craven and fled.

While this fitly, though inadequately, describes the girl's condition of mind as she sat in the car swiftly traversing the short distance between Elmhurst and Washington, there was nothing in her outward appearance to indicate that it was so.

The occupants in that parlor-car saw in Margaret a well-dressed, quiet-appearing young woman, remarkable for nothing perhaps but the pronounced beauty of her face and her rather queenly carriage. It was a mild surprise to see a woman of this type get on at a way station. As she sat intently looking out of the window at the moving panorama of winter trees seen now to best advantage stripped of their summer garments, one might have thought her a devotee of Nature, with an eye and heart single to that alone.

But the oaks and the elms and the lesser folk of the tree-world were in reality making an impression on a retina as unseeing as though back of it there were no brain. This quiet, self-contained looking lady looking out at the wintry landscape with such apparent appreciation was saying to herself in the abandon of despair, "Is it true? Can it be true?"

A phantom shape had been pursuing Margaret De Jarnette for months—a specter of evil form and visage. It had given her just a glimpse of itself now and then; it was quick to hide behind more agreeable forms and she was always glad to lose it; then she would forget it until some day it would start up before her like a grinning death's head for a brief second and again disappear. She had eluded it. She had denied its existence even to herself, but she knew now that she had feared it from the first and refused to face it. To-day it had taken bodily shape and grappled with her.

It was through Mammy Cely that the incarnation came. Margaret had been talking to the old woman as she often did about the case in court, its long delay, and finally the bill and the relief which that promised even if the case in court failed.

"Miss Margaret," said Mammy Cely, not looking at her, but speaking in a voice of great compassionateness, "is you sho' that bill gwineter he'p you?"

"Why, certainly!" Margaret answered as she had answered Mrs. Pennybacker when she had asked the same foolish question (it was at such times that the specter rose before her), "It will give me Philip."

Mammy Cely still looked away.

"Marse Richard 'low that bill don't have nothin' 't all to do with Philip. Maybe he don't know," she added, but rather doubtfully, for she had boundless confidence in Richard's knowledge.

"He certainly does not know," said Margaret sharply. "How did you happen to be talking to him about it?"

"I jes' accidently mentioned that you was layin' off to take Philip as soon as the bill passed, and he 'low the bill didn't have no bearin' on the case. He say it can't ondo a thing that was done years ago."

Margaret felt that she had received a blow. A sudden recollection of Senator Black's words flashed upon her and she grew so white that Mammy Cely prudently refrained from any more discussion of the subject. She might have told her how in the goodness of her heart she had gone to Mr. De Jarnette, hoping to stir pity in his breast, and said, "Marse Richard, do you reckon that po' chile gwineter live ef this here bill givin' her Philip don't pass?" and how he had answered her in shocked amazement, "Giving her Philip! Great heavens, you don't tell me she is expecting that?"

He really looked so concerned that it seemed to Mammy Cely as if the emotion she had been trying to fan into flame flared up for a moment, but it and her hope went out together as he added coldly, "If that is what she is working for, she might as well give it up. That bill couldn't undo what was done years ago." She did not tell Margaret all this, however, contenting herself with repeating, "No 'm, he say it don't have no bearin' on the case."

"It is false!" cried Margaret, with vehement iteration. "He'll find that it will have some bearing on the case before we are through."

Her anger sustained her until she reached the station. Then when she had kissed Philip good-bye and settled back weakly in her seat, a horrible sinking of soul came over her. What if it were true? Looking out at the shivering trees and the leaden sky impassively, she was telling herself in a transport of feeling and of fear that it was not true! It couldn't be true!

But thinking of Senator Black's strange look of pity and his stranger words, "I wish this bill could do as much for you, Mrs. De Jarnette, as you can do for it," doubt began to clutch at her heart. Was this what he meant? Going over her interviews with this one and that in these weeks it seemed to her that she could recall traces of compassion in their words, their looks, as they talked with her. She had thought then it was pity for her wrongs. Was it for her blindness?... Why had nobody told her? Had she no friend that it must be left for her enemy to enlighten her? Why had they let her go on working for this thing as though her soul's salvation had depended upon it—only to find out when all was done, that it was but an abstract law—something that would be useful to humanity perhaps, but left her desolate as before.... Humanity! What was humanity to a mother robbed?

Shame smote her then. She heard the voice of Mrs. Greuze saying of a fellow worker: "She has a heart big enough to take in the world and all its woes." But then Mrs. Belden was childless. Perhaps God had given her empty hands that she might work for weak ones too weighted down with cares to help themselves. Well! He had emptied her arms too. Was it thus that the great heart of humanity was brought to throb in unison?

She felt suddenly strengthless as if some spring of life were broken.... How she had labored for this thing, sparing not herself in any way, giving time and strength and travail of soul to the furtherance of this bill. And to what purpose? Only an hour ago she was planning what she would say to Senator Blanton when she went to see him. She had been so successful that she was eager to try her powers of persuasion again. It was a joy to work in a great cause like this. Now the zest had faded out of life as the color out of an evening cloud. Everything was stale, flat and unprofitable. "What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?" came suddenly to her mind with a force never felt before. Who was it said that?... Oh, yes, the Wise Man of course. She had often heard Mrs. Pennybacker quote the words. Well! he was wise, she told herself scornfully. There was no profit. And the Wise Man had found it out. She wondered weakly, feeling very tired all at once, if he had discovered it before he had worn himself out.

The train moved steadily on. The scene constantly shifted, but she did not see.

Mr. De Jarnette—had said—that—the bill would not give her Philip. She must think it out before she got there—what to do—now.

At the station her carriage was waiting for her.

"To Judge Kirtley's office."

On the way, looking absently from the carriage window, she saw a lady with a little boy about Philip's age holding to her hand and skipping by her side. It was strange, but all the children seemed to be about Philip's age. The boy was telling something eagerly and she could catch his childish treble and see the mother smile. A pang shot through her to see the sweet comradeship between the two. Did the woman know how blest she was?

On the street in full view of the Capitol they passed the entrance to one of the blind alleys that still disgrace Washington. A drunken man piloted by a woman with a baby in her arms and another clinging to her skirts was making toward the alley. The man, insecure of footing, lurched forward almost under the horses' feet. The coachman reined them in suddenly and the woman jerked the man back. With an oath he turned and struck her, kicking the child when it cried with fright.

Margaret drew a quick breath. Here—here under the very shadow of the Dome, a drunken, brutish man who could neither protect his children nor take care of himself, was given rights to those children that the mother could not share—could not share and could not shake off! Unless—unless the bill should pass! She leaned back in the carriage and closed her eyes.

In the office she lost no time in circumlocution.

"Judge Kirtley," she asked, cutting short his protestations of surprise at seeing her, "is it true that if this joint guardianship bill passes it will not give me Philip?"

"Give you Philip? Why, child—my dear child, you haven't supposed—God bless my soul," he broke off abruptly. The idea that her ignorance of the law should have misled her into supposing that the bill would help her personally, except so far as it might influence the decision of the court when her case came up, had never occurred to him. She had thrown herself headlong into this movement without asking advice from anybody, but he had supposed that it was from her rather natural sympathy for womankind, and he had welcomed it as a diversion to her in the trying time of awaiting action by the court. In fact, he had encouraged her efforts. He was wondering now blankly if that encouragement had not been ill-judged.

"It would not help me in any way?" she persisted, reading the answer in his disturbed face. He answered her plainly then, though with a lawyer's caution.

"The fact that such a bill had been passed after much agitation might have its effect upon the decision of the court when your case comes up. I should not say that that would be impossible, nor even improbable. But that is the only way in which it could affect it. A law like that would not be retroactive. It is better for you to know this now, Margaret."

She sat so long without speaking that he began nervously to dread a break-down or an outburst such as she used to give way to. He had no need to fear. The woman before him was not the girl of those tempestuous days. No school develops us so swiftly as sorrow's school. With the little nunnery maid who talked with Guinevere, she had learned

"But it would help other women, in years to come," she said at last in a voice that thrilled with feeling—"women who cannot fight for themselves—" the woman of the street was before her—"who do not have a friend like you to fight for them?"

"Unquestionably. If that bill becomes a law no other woman in this District will ever stand where you do to-day pleading for her child."

She stood up then with eyes shining and head thrown back.

"Then let me do what I can," she cried. "This is not for one woman but for many."

Oddly enough, as he looked at her, there came into his mind two pictures he had seen on her own walls,—one, the old familiar one of the sitting mother clasping to her heart the Divine Child as if she would keep Him forever within her sheltering arms; the other, with face illumined and a larger vision that took in the whole world's needs, holding the Christ-child up, an offering to humanity.

The woman before him might have been a "chair madonna" yesterday; to-day she was a "Sistine."