Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/169

 required charity to understand such things and only God had charity. And who could know that there was a God? He had been honest with the Church, he told himself. He had never let men know that he doubted these things.

The struggle was beginning again. He saw it now. He was too old to fight against it any longer, but there was a part of him that would not leave him in peace—that part which would not lie down shamelessly in the calm which appeared to envelop those who never asked questions.

He did not see Anna now as he had seen her a little while before in the loggia of that preposterous woman at the Villa Leonardo. He kept seeing her as he had seen her years before when they were both young, when—(why did he keep on tormenting himself?) when it could have happened. And now it was too late. There was no living life over again. There was only that single straight narrow groove, the record of each life, which was soon worn away and forgotten when you were dead. Who would remember you when you were dead? Who would care what you had done, what pleasures you had known and what sorrows? What difference could it have made? It would not have been an easy thing, what with his having been Father d'Astier and she the Princess d'Orobelli. Could they have dared such a thing, and faced life confident in each other, finding in each enough to throw away all else? She would have gone in recklessly, greedily. Perhaps her way was better, after all, taking life as it came, squeezing it for the last drop of color and fire and beauty. 