Vaguely she hoped that she might be the next to go, thought of her prayer for speech, and dashed the bitter tears from her dull eyes. What of her prayer? Perhaps to the Serpent it sounded nothing more than clamorous presumption and self-will.
Again she had been offered the shelter of the Home for Deaf and Dumb by those who recognised her sad position. Was she ungrateful? Many poor waifs there were, she knew, in that great city, with none to help them to the scantiest food and shelter.
“I can’t believe you’re either kind or just, and I won’t pray to you any more!” she cried inwardly, jumping up fiercely at last. “I wasn’t made to be without a tongue. I wasn’t! I wasn’t! You haven’t the power to give me one; that’s what it really is.”
But no bricks and mortar fell to punish such an outburst.
“What have I done that I should be left here alone?” she continued. “I want to go along with aunt and uncle. You know I do. I can’t live here alone.”
But there was no answer. Gradually a calmer spirit came over her, together with a wish to find out that sphinx-like secret that wrapped itself in icy silence.
“What’s the good of making me want to talk if you won’t let me?” she asked.
Out of the vast silence a voice seemed to shape itself at last.
“Give up! Sacrifice!” it said.
It was such a very beautiful voice, and yet so very cold, that Rosalie shrank from it. Sacrifice was such a heathenish thing! Besides, what was there to sacrifice in the way of a tongue—she hadn’t got one, not a serviceable one, at any rate.