STRANDED
Mrs. Thorpe sat in her room one morning, a piece of needlework in her hands. It was a beautiful piece of work and she held it from her and looked at it critically.
"You are my sedative," she said. "When a heart cries for God and cannot find Him; when a sacrilegious questioner tries to solve some of the problems of this life, or to learn the cause of this great world's woe--when one is so lacking in judgment as to try to do this, serious trouble is likely to follow and then one must have something, really must have something to distract the mind for a time." She gave an odd little laugh and drew her work to her.
A phantasm of her imagination had caused her to discard her books. Whenever she opened a book and prepared to read, a phantom form, sable and somber, peered over her shoulder and read with her.
Then she resolved to read no more books and to think as little as possible about those she had read; and to this end she had taken up needlework. She knew what her condition was physically, and realized that it was only by the exertion of her will power that her mind, too, was not a wreck. She had a curious habit of looking at her mind and brain as something apart from herself, and as another personality she studied their condition.
"HE TOOK HER IN HIS ARMS AS THOUGH SHE WERE A LITTLE CHILD" (page [97])
When she discarded her books, the phantom disappeared for a time, and she believed that she had exorcised it. But after a time she saw that she was mistaken in this, for it returned at intervals, more grim and determined than before. It never made a sudden impression on her, and it never startled her; but always when she became aware of its presence she felt that it had been with her all the time--always, only she had not recognized it. Then silently it would jeer at her blindness and dullness of perception, and triumphantly assert that no one on whom it fixed its choice ever eluded it.
Mrs. Thorpe had begun sorting her silks for her work when her attention was attracted by a song that Pauline was singing:
"Is not this the land of Beulah,
Blessed, blessed land of light
Where the flowers bloom forever
And the sun is always bright?"