“Honey, it’s a punishment on me for my wickedness.”
“No, no, no! What wickedness have you ever done?”
“Oh, you know well enough. You cried hard enough once. And there have been so many cruel things I have done, so many mean evil thoughts, so many little goodnesses I put off. God is remembering those things against me.”
“You make God more cruel than man. How could he be? It’s blasphemy to blame him for your misery.”
He thought, of course, of Harry Chalender. Harry Chalender!—Harry Chalender, who had never repented a crime, never reformed, never spared a home or a virtue or failed to abet a weakness. Yet he was hale and smirking still at life, an heroic rake still fluttering the young girls’ hearts, garnering the praises of men. If God were punishing sin, how could he pass Harry Chalender by, and let him live untouched?
But Patty’s head swung back and forth:
“God can never forgive me, I suppose. But you do—don’t you, honey?—you forgive me?”
“I have nothing to forgive you for. You have been my angel always. I adore you.”
She clenched his hand with gratitude and then she wrung it as a throe wrung her. It was RoBards that cried, screamed:
“Oh, I don’t want you to suffer. I don’t want it! I don’t want it! I can’t stand it!”