“I meant to ask you to advise me about myself.”
“My advice to you was and is—be strong but not too foolhardy.”
“Believe me I will try not to be foolhardy. But you said something else too, something about women. Don’t you remember?”
She stopped, took his hands impulsively and pressed them.
“Father, I’ve scarcely ever been of any use all my life. I’ve scarcely ever tried to be. Nothing within me said, ‘You could be,’ and if it had I was so dulled by routine and sorrow that I don’t think I should have heard it. But here it is different. I am not dulled. I can hear. And—suppose I can be of use for the first time! You wouldn’t say to me, ‘Don’t try!’ You couldn’t say that?”
He stood holding her hands and looking into her face for a moment. Then he said, half-humorously, half-sadly:
“My child, perhaps you know your own strength best. Perhaps your safest spiritual director is your own heart. Who knows? But whether it be so or not you will not take advice from me.”
She knew that was true now and, for a moment, felt almost ashamed.
“Forgive me,” she said. “But—it is strange, and may seem to you ridiculous or even wrong—ever since I have been here I have felt as if everything that happened had been arranged beforehand, as if it had to happen. And I feel that, too, about the future.”
“Count Anteoni’s fatalism!” the priest said with a touch of impatient irritation. “I know. It is the guiding spirit of this land. And you too are going to be led by it. Take care! You have come to a land of fire, and I think you are made of fire.”