“I swear I’ll never touch another drop after I’m out of this if you’ll give it to me now—”
“If it be the Lord’s will that you shall live you will not die,” said Miss Beale. “I will pray, and in His mercy He may let you live to repent.”
She fell upon her knees by the bed, and clasping her hands, prayed aloud; while the man reared and plunged and groaned and cursed, his voice and body momentarily weaker. Miss Beale’s prayers were always very long and very fervid. She was not eloquent, but her deep tear-voiced earnestness was most impressive; and never more so than to-day, when she flung herself before the throne of Grace with a lost soul in her hand. A light like a halo played upon her spiritualised face, her voice became ineffably sweet. Gradually, in her ecstatic communion with, her intimate nearness to her God, she forgot the man on the bed, forgot the flesh which prisoned her soaring soul, was conscious only of the divine light pouring through her, the almost palpable touch of her lover’s hand.
Suddenly Patience exclaimed brutally: “The man is dead.”
Miss Beale arose with a start. She drew the sheet gently over the distorted face. “It is the Lord’s will,” she said.
After Patience was in her own room and had relieved her feelings by slamming the door, she sat for a long time staring at the pattern of the carpet and pondering upon the problem of Miss Beale.
“Well,” she thought finally, “she’s happy, so I suppose it’s all right. No wonder she’s satisfied with herself when she lives up to her ideals as consistently as that. I think I’ll label all the different forms of selfishness I come across. There seems to be a large variety, but all put together don’t seem to be a patch to having fun with your ideals. Miss Beale would be the most wretched woman in Westchester county if she’d given that man whisky and saved his life.”
VII
The man was buried with Christian service at Miss Beale’s expense, and her serene face wore no shadow. The following day she said to Patience: “I spent nearly all of the last two nights in prayer, and I almost heard the Lord’s voice as He told me I did right.”
“You ought to write a novel,” said Patience, drily, but the sarcasm was lost. In a moment Patience forgot Miss Beale: the postman handed her two letters, and she went up to her room to read them.