Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/147

 to be disquieted for Thy sake is very wholesome for my soul."

"Jean sought to cure me," she thought, "by giving me a book when he should have given me himself."

Perhaps if I read now God will reward me and send Oreste, after all. But that is foolish. I have never prayed to God except when I am unhappy. He must remember that. I only come to Him when I want to beg something of Him. No, the end must be in black. All great harlots become pious in their old age, as if faith could take the place of love.

She tried to read, but she did not know what she was reading. She kept thinking of the excuses Oreste would write tomorrow and thinking, "If I wear black I had best go to Worth. He will make me look discreet and respectable and chic. I shall be able to wear black without becoming an old horror. Satin I shall wear and black velvet. How people will talk when I am no longer seen about, when they hear that I have shut myself up at Venterollo with Faustino and my idiot son. Perhaps they will come and see me there. Surely God won't mind that. I can have Nina come. I can even have people to stay. God wouldn't mind that.

"But he that is wise and well-instructed in the Spirit is raised above these mutable things: not heeding what he feeleth in himself, of which way the wind of instability bloweth; but studies only that his mind may be directed to its supreme and final good.

"For thus he will be able to continue throughout one and the selfsame, and unshaken. . . ."

She tried to read on and on, calming her soul with