"It's the only reality left in my life."
"Then I wish you'd die quick and be at peace," she said fiercely. "I love you so dear that I can wish that for you!"
"I'm dying fast enough—yet not fast enough. I'm impatient now to see what mercy means—mercy and forgiveness. I shall know soon. How clear the stages are, Sarah Jane! I wonder if they are so clear with you? First joy and pride in what I'd done; then content and a blessed memory to look back upon; then, as disease got hold of me, and I had to begin to fight for life, clouds came between me and the past. Then the first sharp twinge of regret, as my soul began to waken; then sorrow; then frantic, undying grief and a vain agony of longing that I'd not sinned so damnably against those I loved best in the world. Have you felt so, Sarah Jane?"
"Never," she said. "I wept fire for a week after; I was half raving for joy and half raving for misery—mad like. Then I put it all behind me. Things stronger than me—or you—worked that deed. I'll pay the price, if I must. I didn't do it for myself—you know that."
"Can't you feel for my sufferings?"
At the bottom of her heart flashed a passing scorn; but she expelled it and blamed only his unhappy physical decay.
"'Twill all be made up if what you think is right. Your Christ will be so pleased with you for being sorry, that He'll forgive you everything—and me too. We sinners are His sort. The just persons go into heaven without any fuss, by all accounts. 'Tis such as we are—weak, wicked, good-for-noughts—that the angels will blow their trumpets for."
Hilary was astonished at her attitude and its satire—the more terrible because quite unconscious.
"What would Daniel say to that?" he asked.
"I don't know," she answered. "And I don't care."