She turned to go out.  Through the open door she saw the night and the storm.  Within was the silent dome, and the organ-hymn still swelling up to it.

It was still of the wounded that they sang.  Meg listened, lingered, touched the preacher on the arm as he came by.

“I want to ask you a question.”

He started at the sight of her, or more perhaps at the sharpness in her voice.

“Why, why, who are you?”

“I’m Meg.  You don’t know me.  I ain’t fit for your fine Christian people to touch; they won’t let their little children speak to me.”

“Well?” he said, nervously, for she paused.

“Well?  You’re a preacher.  I want to know about Him they’ve been singing of, I came in to hear the singing.  I like it.”

“I—­I don’t quite understand you,” began the minister.  “You surely have heard of Jesus Christ.”

“Yes,” her eyes softened, “somebody used to tell me; it was mother; we lived in the country.  I wasn’t what I am now.  I want to know if he can put me back again.  What if I should tell him I was going to be different?  Would he hear me, do you suppose?”

Somehow the preacher’s scholarly self-possession failed him.  He felt ill at ease, standing there with the woman’s fixed black eyes upon him.

“Why, yes; he always forgives a repentant sinner.”

“Repentant sinner.”  She repeated the words musingly.  “I don’t understand all these things.  I’ve forgotten most all about it.  I want to know.  Couldn’t I come in some way with the children and be learnt ’em?  I wouldn’t make any trouble.”

There was something almost like a child in her voice just then, almost as earnest and as pure.  The preacher took out his handkerchief and wiped his face; then he changed his hat awkwardly from hand to hand.

“Why, why, really, we have no provision in our Sabbath school for cases like this:  we have been meaning to establish an institution of a missionary character, but the funds cannot be raised just yet.  I am sorry; I don’t know but—­”

“It’s no matter!”

Meg turned sharply away, her hands dropping lifelessly; she moved toward the door.  They were alone now in the church, they two.

The minister’s pale cheek flushed; he stepped after her.

“Young woman!”

She stopped, her face turned from him.

“I will send you to some of the city missionaries, or I will go with you to the Penitents’ Retreat.  I should like to help you.  I—­”

He would have exhorted her to reform as kindly as he knew how; he felt uncomfortable at letting her go so; he remembered just then who washed the feet of his Master with her tears.  But she would not listen.  She turned from him, and out into the storm, some cry on her lips,—­it might have been:—­

“There ain’t nobody to help me.  I was going to be better!”

She sank down on the snow outside, exhausted by the racking cough which the air had again brought on.