“I will keep my one atom of faith,” said my soul.
“But lie and sleep now,” I said. “Don’t reach after that Light any more. Let us both sleep a few years.”
“No,” said my soul.
“Oh, my soul,” I wailed, “look away at that glowing copper horizon—and beyond it. Let us go there now and take an infinite rest. Now! We can bear this no longer.”
“No,” said my soul; “we will stay here and bear more. There would be no rest yet beyond the copper horizon. And there is no need of going anywhere. I have my one atom of faith.”
I gazed at my soul as it stood plainly before me, weak and worn and faint, in the fading light. It had one atom of faith, it said, and tried to hold its head high and to look strong and triumphant. Oh, the irony—the pathos of it!
My soul, with its one pitiful atom of faith, looked only what it was—a weeping, hunted thing.
[March 17.]
IN SOME rare between-whiles it is as if nothing mattered. My heart aches, I say; my soul wanders; this person or that person was repelled to-day; but nothing matters.