She laid the wet handkerchief on her mother's sallow forehead, then she recoiled, for her mother, at the shock of the coldness, experienced a new and almost insufferable spasm of pain.

"Let--me alone!" she wailed, and it was like the howl of a dog.
Maria slunk back to the dresser with the handkerchief and the cologne bottle, then she returned to her mother's bedside and seated herself there in a rocking-chair.

A lamp was burning over on the dresser, but it was turned low; her mother's convulsed face seemed to waver in unaccountable shadows.

Maria sat, not speaking a word, but quivering from head to foot, and her mother kept up her prayers and her verses from Scripture.

Maria herself began to pray in her heart.