"And come back to dinner," said she, following, "I can't pass the evening alone."
"I shall come."
"But you won't frighten me any more with this religious talk?"
Lionel pressed her hand sadly. "I have done what I could, Leah. Only the Holy Spirit can bring home conviction to your heart. Try and pray."
"Yes," assented the Duchess, submissively; "it is all that is left."
"Then the better part, which cannot be taken away, is left."
He went away quite deceived, since she had suggested the Viennese physician so calmly. He thought that she still hoped desperately, and for all he knew the hope might be fulfilled, seeing the present-day resources of science. Certainly he never dreamed how she had hoodwinked him, and so sped on his errand of mercy, leaving behind him a woman too broken to exult in the success of her final piece of trickery.
It was all over. Man could do nothing; God would do nothing. As Demetrius had been smitten for the crime she had induced him to commit, so was she being punished for the evil she had called into being. Lionel had talked nonsense, of course; but he left behind him a feeling in her mind that the God he worshipped did exist. How the belief had come into her heart, she could not say; but it was certainly there. Try as she might, with all the strength of her brilliant intellect, she knew that never again could she be an atheist. God existed to her comprehension at last. But the newly-conceived Deity was not the Father of love and light. Rather did He appear an omnipotent tyrant, who had driven her to bad courses by giving her tastes she was unable to satisfy, and who now punished her for acting as the nature He had given her dictated. She was like a mouse in the claws of a cat, and could no more escape than could the tormented little beast. Only to the height of acknowledging that Something much stronger than herself existed could she rise; and her submission was as that of Caliban to Prospero. Wrenched violently from the egotistic wrappings of her soul, she--the true self, the immortal spirit--stood naked and shamed, yet defiant. She submitted, because only submission was left. But all her flesh shouted furiously against its victor.
Then, again, as the tormented soul strove to overcome the lower material self, did she recall Lionel's words. God was love, he declared, and in love had God broken her shield of self, snapped her sword of desire. Certainly, now that this world could do nothing for her, she would be forced to seek the other. There she might learn how to rise from darkness into light. That the spiritual existed she was now reluctantly convinced; that a study of its meaning would bring her peace she could not be certain. Of course, it was early days yet. She had gained a great step by the admission that God reigned, even though He had proved it to her so cruelly. It might be that by endless striving she would learn something of His love before Death ended her intolerable sufferings. God ordered her to fly; was it worth while to trust to Him for wings?
The struggle of the soul wavering between hell and heaven might have ended in the victory of the latter, and Leah might have consented with bitter tears to bear the cross laid upon her shrinking shoulders. But while wearily pacing the room a chance glance showed her in the mirror that beauty of which she had been, and was, so proud. Leaning her arms on the mantelpiece, she examined every detail lovingly and long. Could she bear to see that gradually disappear? Could she accept life as a Thing and not as a Being? Those blue eyes would grow dull and animal; that glorious hair would drop off; that complexion of cream and roses would--would---- Ugh! ugh!