Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/96

88 her courage and knocked at a grimy door.

Half an hour later she came downstairs with the light of a new knowledge in her eyes. She could never define for herself the precise nature of the experience through which she had passed. In the room she had entered was a woman sobbing at the side of her little child, who lay dead with the print of his tiny fingers still visible in the dirt on his cheek.

As she went away Mrs. Kent paused for a minute in the hall. Then she leaned her forehead against the rough plaster with a little sob of sheer joy. It was good to be hurt like that by another's pain. She bowed her head in thankfulness for a sorrow that had become to her a key to the grief of all the world.