Page:Arthur Machen, The Secret Glory, 1922.djvu/285

The Secret Glory plant into which Nelly entered. I believe she repelled the advances of 'master' with success. Her final undoing came from a different quarter, and I am afraid that drugs, not Biblical cajoleries, were the instruments used. She cried bitterly when she spoke of this event, but she said, too; 'I will kill him for it!' It was an ugly story, and a sad one, alas!—the saddest tale I ever listened to. Think of it: to come from that old cabin on the wild, bare hills, from the sound of the great sea, from the pure breath of the waves and the wet salt wind, to the stenches and the poisons of our 'industrial centres.' She came from parents who had nothing and possessed all things, to our civilisation which has everything, and lies on the dung-heap that it has made at the very gates of Heaven—destitute of all true treasures, full of sores and vermin and corruption. She was nurtured on the wonderful old legends of the saints and the fairies; she had listened to the songs that her father made and cut in Oghams; and we gave her the penny novelette and the works of Madame Chose. She had knelt before the altar, adoring the most holy sacrifice of the Mass; now she knelt beside 'master' while he approached the Lord in prayer, licking his fat white lips. I can imagine no more terrible transition.

"I do not know how or why it happened, but 269