She walked on; agony winged her feet and she could not be still; she avoided the places which she knew, and turned down strange streets and byways. She had no thought of time. It grew late, the short winter day drew to its close; still she walked on. While her strength endured she went on,—it seemed as if pursuing fate drove her. She was not physically strong, yet she was walking beyond the endurance of most women.
As the twilight gathered and the lights began to start up here and there, she turned, with a dim realization of her unfamiliar surroundings and her sudden complete exhaustion. It was St. Thomas’ Day, four days to Christmas; she had no recognition of it, but, looking up, her eye caught the lighted vestibule of a church, and she saw some women going in to vespers; an impulse made her follow them. The heavy doors swung easily inward, and conscious only of the shelter, the chance for rest, a moment to collect her thoughts, she passed in.
The service was nearly concluded, but she paid no heed to that; moving quietly across the aisle and finding a dark corner, she sat down wearily, and crossing her arms upon the back of the pew in front of her hid her face upon them. Mere physical weariness had brought a dull relief to the gnawing pain at her heart; it clouded her brain too, as weariness sometimes does, and she found the horrible vivid thoughts which had tormented her slipping softly away into a haze of forgetfulness; her mind seemed a mere blur.
The soft organ tones swelling through the dim church harmonized with her mood; she lost herself, lost the agony of those past hours, and rested there, inert, helpless, without power to think. She was scarcely conscious of what passed around her, her throbbing head felt heavy on her slender arms, and she listened, in a vague way, to the music, aware at last of a stillness, then the rustle and stir of people settling themselves back in the long pews. She stirred herself, turning her face upon her arms.
A voice penetrated the stillness, a voice with that vibrant quality of youth and passionate self-confidence.
“‘The wages of sin is death!’”
Margaret started and raised her head. Her eyes, blinded by the sudden light in the chancel, flickered a moment and she passed her hand across them; at last she saw quite plainly a young strong face, with a tense eager look, white against the dark finishings of the pulpit; she caught the dazzling white of his surplice, the vivid scarlet of the hood which showed on his shoulders.
“‘The wages of sin is death!’” He repeated it, giving out his text in a voice which was resonant with feeling.
Margaret sat back in her corner, gazing at him with fixed, helpless eyes, her very soul dazed under the force of revelation which was coming to her swiftly, overwhelmingly. The revelation of her own life, not of God. As yet she framed no thought of that awful Presence, found no interpretation of the tumult in her own soul, but she knew, at last, that she had sinned. Sinned against herself, her womanhood, her honor, her self-respect, sinned against the man she had married, against the children she had borne, and, at last—oh, God!—against the man she loved.
The wages of sin is death.