第8章

Alone with that black-shawled figure in the silent church, Anna did not pray.Resting there on her knees, she experienced only the sore sensation of revolt.Why had Fate flung this feeling into her heart, lighted up her life suddenly, if God refused her its enjoyment? Some of the mountain pinks remained clinging to her belt, and the scent of them, crushed against her, warred with the faint odour of age and incense.While they were there, with their enticement and their memories, prayer would never come.But did she want to pray? Did she desire the mood of that poor soul in her black shawl, who had not moved by one hair's breadth since she had been watching her, who seemed resting her humble self so utterly, letting life lift from her, feeling the relief of nothingness? Ah, yes! what would it be to have a life so toilsome, so little exciting from day to day and hour to hour, that just to kneel there in wistful stupor was the greatest pleasure one could know? It was beautiful to see her, but it was sad.And there came over Anna a longing to go up to her neighbour and say: "Tell me your troubles;we are both women." She had lost a son, perhaps, some love--or perhaps not really love, only some illusion.Ah! Love....Why should any spirit yearn, why should any body, full of strength and joy, wither slowly away for want of love? Was there not enough in this great world for her, Anna, to have a little? She would not harm him, for she would know when he had had enough of her; she would surely have the pride and grace then to let him go.For, of course, he would get tired of her.At her age she could never hope to hold a boy more than a few years--months, perhaps.But would she ever hold him at all? Youth was so hard--it had no heart! And then the memory of his eyes came back--gazing up, troubled, almost wild--when she had dropped on him those flowers.That memory filled her with a sort of delirium.One look from her then, one touch, and he would have clasped her to him.She was sure of it, yet scarcely dared to believe what meant so much.And suddenly the torment that she must go through, whatever happened, seemed to her too brutal and undeserved! She rose.Just one gleam of sunlight was still slanting through the doorway; it failed by a yard or so to reach the kneeling countrywoman, and Anna watched.Would it steal on and touch her, or would the sun pass down behind the mountains, and it fade away? Unconscious of that issue, the black-shawled figure knelt, never moving.And the beam crept on."If it touches her, then he will love me, if only for an hour; if it fades out too soon--" And the beam crept on.That shadowy path of light, with its dancing dust-motes, was it indeed charged with Fate--indeed the augury of Love or Darkness? And, slowly moving, it mounted, the sun sinking; it rose above that bent head, hovered in a golden mist, passed--and suddenly was gone.

Unsteadily, seeing nothing plain, Anna walked out of the church.

Why she passed her husband and the boy on the terrace without a look she could not quite have said--perhaps because the tortured does not salute her torturers.When she reached her room she felt deadly tired, and lying down on her bed, almost at once fell asleep.

She was wakened by a sound, and, recognizing the delicate 'rat-tat'