"Always take the part of the people in the wrong—they need it most."
The only conviction to which she could lay claim was somehow embodied in that sentiment.
XXVIII
Cedric
She wrote to Cedric, the sense of having put herself irrevocably in the wrong by her own act making her explanation into an utterly bald, lifeless statement of fact. She felt entirely unable to enter into any analysis of her folly, and besides, it would have been of no use. Facts were facts. She had taken Cedric's money, which he had given her for one purpose, and used it for another. There had not even been any violent struggle with temptation to palliate the act.
Alex felt a sort of dazed stupefaction at herself.
She was bad, she told herself, bad all through, and this was how bad people felt. Sick with disappointment, and utterly unavailing remorse, knowing all the time that there was no strength in them ever to resist any temptation, however base.
She wondered if there was a hell, as the convent teaching had so definitely told her. If so, Alex shudderingly contemplated her doom. But she prayed desperately that there might be nothing after death but utter oblivion. It was then that the thought of death first came to her, not with the wild, impotent longing of her days of struggle, but with an insidious suggestion of rest and escape.
She played with the idea, but for the most part her faculties were absorbed in the increasing strain of waiting for Cedric's reply to her confession.