Besides, an active patience is a heavenly power.

Mary could not only walk along a pavement dry and lifeless as the Sahara, enjoying the summer that brooded all about and beyond the city, but she bore the re-freshment of blowing winds and running waters into Letty's hot room, with the clanging street in front, and the little yard behind, where, from a cord stretched across between the walls, hung a few pieces of ill-washed linen, motionless in the glare, two plump sparrows picking up crumbs in their shadow--into this live death Mary would carry a tone of breeze, and sailing cloud, and swaying tree-top.

In her the life was so concentrated and active that she was capable of communicating life--the highest of human endowments.
One evening, as Letty was telling her how the dressmaker up stairs had been for some time unwell, and Mary was feeling reproachful that she had not told her before, that she might have seen what she could do for her, they became aware, it seemed gradually, of one softest, sweetest, faintest music-tone coming from somewhere--but not seeming sufficiently of this world to disclose whence.

Mary went to the window: there was nothing capable of music within sight.

It came again; and intermittingly came and came.