Once we met him. Something began that day to whisper in the back of my head: "If he asks her enough she might give in. She does to me when I persist."
Out of my first great anxiety was born the beginning of my knowledge of my mother's character.
I could see that she, too, was afraid of giving in.
But afraid of contest quite as much. Afraid of—I knew not what. But I knew she stayed away from church, because she was afraid. I knew our walks were different, because we were always thinking we might meet him.
I prayed God to give my mother strength—for Christ's sake not to let it happen. Morning and night I prayed that prayer for half a summer.
Dreadful as the issue was, I was thankful afterwards that I had taken the matter in hand.
CHAPTER III
A THUNDER-STORM
Two Sundays in succession we had not been to church. As we were going out, after lessons, on Monday morning, a thunder-storm came on. So Bettina and I played in the upstairs passage. I remember how dark it grew, although there was a skylight overhead, and a window opening on the staircase. We groped for our playthings in the twilight, till quite suddenly the croisée of the casement showed as ink-black lines crossing a square of blue-white fire.
The shadowy stair was fiercely lit; our toys, too, and our faces. The moment after, we sat in blackness, waiting for the thunder. Far off it seemed to fall clattering down some vast incline. Then the rain. Thudding torrents that threatened to batter in the skylight.
Our mother came out of her room in time to receive the next flash full upon her face. I see the light now, making her eyes glitter and her paleness ghostlike.