Page:A Good Woman (1927).pdf/80

 (Yes, that was true. The Bible had it all written down. You couldn't answer a thing like that.)

"He's lost his faith," said Naomi.

"You must pray, Philip. I pray when I'm in doubt—when I'm in trouble. I've prayed when I've been worried over the factory, and help always came."

"I can't explain it, Uncle Elmer. It's a spiritual thing that's happened to me . . . I couldn't go back—not now!"

Uncle Elmer's eyebrows raised a little, superciliously, shocked.

"A spiritual thing? To turn your back on God!"

"I haven't said that—" How could he explain when "spiritual" meant to them only Uncle Elmer's idea of "Biblical"? "I mean it is something that's happened to my spirit—deep inside me."

How could he explain what had happened to him as he lay in the rushes watching the procession of black girls? Or what had happened as he stood half-naked by the dying fire listening to the drums beating against the dome of the night? How could he explain when he did not know himself? Yet it was an experience of the spirit. It had happened to his soul.

He kept repeating to himself, "I won't—I won't. They can't make me." He saw his mother watching him with sad eyes, and he had to look away in order not to weaken and surrender.

Then Naomi's flat voice, "I've prayed—I've pled with him. I never cease to pray." She had begun to weep.

Philip's jaw, lean from illness and dark from want of shaving, set with a sudden click. His mother saw it, with a sudden sickening feeling that the enlarged