Ilse said: “Palla had already begun her novitiate. But what happened in those terrible moments changed her utterly.... I think she went mad at the moment.... Then the Superior came to me and begged me to hide Palla because the Bolsheviki had promised to return and cut her throat when they had finished their bloody business in the crypt.... So I caught her up in my arms and I ran out into the convent grounds. And at that very moment, God be thanked, a sotnia of the Wild Division rode up looking for me. And they had led horses with them. And we were in the saddle and riding like maniacs before I could think. That is all, except, an hour ago we saw your sleigh.”
“You have been hiding with the Cossacks ever since!” exclaimed Estridge to Palla.
“That is her history,” replied Ilse, “and mine. And,” 11 she added cheerfully but tenderly, “my little comrade, here, is very, very homesick, very weary, very deeply and profoundly unhappy in the loss of her closest friend... and perhaps in the loss of her faith in God.”
“I am tranquil and I am not unhappy,”––said Palla. “And if I ever win free of this murderous country I shall, for the first time in my life, understand what the meaning of life really is. And shall know how to live.”
“You thought you knew how to live when you took the white veil,” said Ilse cheerfully. “Perhaps, after all, you may make other errors before you learn the truth about it all. Who knows? You might even care to take the veil again–––”
“Never!” cried Palla in a clear, hard little voice, tinged with the scorn and anger of that hot revolt which sometimes shakes youth to the very source of its vitality.
Ilse said very calmly to Estridge: “With me it is my reason and not mere hope that convinces me of God’s existence. I try to reason with Palla because one is indeed to be pitied who has lost belief in God–––”
“You are mistaken,” said Palla drily; “––one merely becomes one’s self when once the belief in that sort of God is ended.”
Ilse turned to Brisson: “That,” she said, “is what seems so impossible for some to accept––so terrible––the apparent indifference, the lack of explanation––God’s dreadful reticence in this thunderous whirlwind of prayer that storms skyward day and night from our martyred world.”
Palla, listening, sat forward and said to Brisson: “There is only one religion and it has only two precepts––love and give! The rest––the forms, observances, 12 creeds, ceremonies, threats, promises, are man-made trash!