Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/160

 prayer, lately uttered by the defendant herself on board the ship Ajax."

William sat up stiffly. He heard these words as surely as he heard the lap-lap of the water against the sides of the gondola.

"I ask the strict attention of the jury, your Honor," went on the prosecuting attorney, "while I recite this prayer: 'Dear God, make me strong. Take out of my heart the evil longings. Give me strength always to be good. Let me not covet that which is not mine. Clean my heart and put temptation behind me. Amen!'"

"Aw, hell!" said William, aloud, crumpling back in his seat.

"Si, Signore," replied the gondolier, believing he had received an order to return to the hotel.

William did not hear him. He was busy fighting his way out of court, out of the house of cards that was tumbling about his ears, out into realities again.

She was always praying. Never they entered a cathedral that she did not kneel in some obscure corner, quite unmindful of his proximity. Well, he loved her none the less for that. But he knew that it was the yacht itself that had provoked that stifled cry. A damnable thought seeped in through the whys and wherefores, but he drove it out, cursing himself for a low beast. After all, hadn't she asked him not to put her on a pedestal? Hadn't she said that she was a human being like the rest? The pedestal was wabbling, and he mutely soug