Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/282

 call of Mr. Winnery, her hair might have been done sloppily. Since she was not there, none of these things happened and Mr. Winnery left disappointed (which is always good for love) and cherishing only the memory of her richly curving bosom, her nice eyes and her dove-like air. And since, despite himself, he really wanted to believe in the beauty and virtue of Miss Fosdick and really wanted to have his life disturbed and exciting now that his liver troubled him less, he went on believing in these things more and more passionately.

In the days that followed Mr. Winnery grew animated and slept very little, walking a great deal and calling upon Mr. Winnop, the curate, and the few old ladies who remained in Brinoë. He was even seized with a fit of ambition to recover some of that glory he had known a quarter of a century earlier as a literary prodigy and set to work to bring order from the confusion of notes, copyings and false starts which represented the existing state of "Miracles and Other Natural Phenomena." He discovered that love (for he conceded that love was the proper diagnosis of his strange transformation) and the creative instinct possessed an obscure and subtle interrelation.

After much wrangling among the local clergy, Miss Annie Spragg was buried at last in the little cemetery on the far slope of Monte Salvatore. The various parties reached a compromise and it was decided at length that she was to be buried in consecrated ground but without the special attentions which should have gone to a woman who was a potential saint. Nevertheless a large number of the