"O Jesu!" she screamed.
Then she heard her daughter's voice, very steady and plain, in her ear.
"There is no priest, mother dear. Listen to me."
"I cannot! I cannot!… Jesu!"
Her eyes closed again for torment, and the sweat ran down her face. The slow poison that had weighted and soaked her limbs so gradually these many months past, was closing in at last upon her heart, and her pain was gathering to its last assault. The silent, humorous woman was changed into one twitching, uncontrolled incarnation of torture.
Then again the voice began:
"Jesu, Who didst die for love of me—upon the Cross—let me die—for love of Thee."
"Christ!" moaned the woman more softly.
"Say it in your heart, after me. There is no priest. So God will accept your sorrow instead. Now then—"
Then the old words began—the old acts of sorrow and love and faith and hope, that mother and daughter had said together, night after night, for so many years. Over and over again they came, whispered clear and sharp by the voice in her ear; and she strove to follow them. Now and again the pain closed its sharp hands upon her heart so cruelly that all that on which she strove to fix her mind, fled from her like a mist, and she moaned or screamed, or was silent with her teeth clenched upon her lip.