Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/168

 knew her. They could not understand why it hurt him when they laughed.

He turned the key and let himself into the two small rooms. They were like twin cells, sparsely furnished, with plain oak tables and chairs, a cupboard. . . . It was here that he came when he wanted peace and rest from the world, when he had need to retire and fight the demon that sometimes claimed his soul. This time he had come all the way from a country house in Shropshire so that he might be alone. And now he was to have no solitude because he had found Anna d'Orobelli in Brinoë and because Fulco chose to torment him with all the nonsense about the Spragg woman being a saint. He was to have no peace because he had found there the two people in all the world whose presence tormented him most.

He did not bother to send for a hot supper. He ate the cheese and wine and bread which he always kept in the cupboard, eating in a room that was dark save for the splashes of moonlight on the floor. Fulco would be coming in a little while. It would be time enough then to have a light.

He thought again, "People do not know how it hurts me when they laugh at her. They do not know that I shall die wondering if I was not the one chosen by God to save her." Perhaps saving her would have been in the sight of God more worthy than all the souls he had brought to the Church, cowardly, worldly, sniveling souls, most of them. But who could decide a thing like that? Certainly not the Church, filled with men no nearer to God than himself and most of them far more stupid. It