“If—if—” she gasped.
“Life is made up of ifs,” laughed a voice in her ear, and it was all over.
The older Deborah grew, the more unhappy she grew inwardly. Not that anybody knew—for in college they never took her to be anything seriously but sleepy.
For one thing, as she grew older, she was beginning to feel more and more the want of some religion. Many and many a time she would get out of bed in the middle of the night and kneel down and try to pray. But on every occasion a feeling of intensest blackness would surround her, and she was bound to give it up.
“It’s all very well the clergy telling us to pray,” she would say, getting back into bed. “But I can’t. Every time I would do it something stops me. I’ve lost God, and where He’s gone to I can’t tell. And I suppose everybody would blame me and say how wicked I was, but it’s because they don’t understand. If I could believe in God and pray to Him as I did when I was a little girl I’d be a deal happier and stronger than I am.”
And so it came to the last few weeks of college life—the time for the awarding of prizes for the year.
Probably all those who have attended schools have experienced that general dissatisfaction which customarily attends the distribution of prizes.
“It’s all done by favouritism,” the girls used to assert. “The way the prizes are given here is a disgrace.”
And one or two rather flagrant examples were given by way of specifying.
“Yes,” said Deborah, who understood things just as well as most people. “I can’t understand what pleasure there is in receiving prizes under such circumstances.”