Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/142

 was one of the marks of a gentleman. And he was dead now for three years. And Amadeo was like him. Nobody had ever suspected Amadeo but Faustino. Faustino knew Amadeo wasn't his child. And Jim's cousin Sabine, who suspected everything and everybody. . . she even dared to speak of Amadeo as "my cousin."

"I mustn't think these things," she told herself. "It's a bad omen, as if I were really an old woman looking back over my life. I mustn't act as if everything was finished. It isn't finished. It isn't finished."

The thought kept pressing in upon her closer and closer. I must push it away. I mustn't even let it take shape. It's nearly eleven now. O God, send him to me. O God, just this once more. Don't make me an old woman. I'm still young. My heart is young. My soul is young. O God, don't take him from me.

A motor-horn was sounding somewhere across the river in the direction of the Palazzo Gonfarini. It's a German horn, like the one Oreste has. If I wait, if I cross my fingers, it will turn into Oreste. Such miracles may happen, only we never know about them. He might have taken the road by Monte Salvatore. No, it isn't Oreste. It sounds farther away now. It was going the other direction. It was climbing the hill toward San Marco. How high the moon is, at the very top of the sky.

Jean could have saved me. Jean was the only one I ever loved. Queer that never once in twenty-five years have I called him Jean, but always Father d'Astier, politely, respectfully, as if there was noth-