Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/285

 whither. His former acquaintances only confirmed the gossip of Maria—that he had gone out to bring the world back to the simplicity of Jesus. He had, they believed, now gone completely mad, but since in Italy people paid small attention to crazy people there was nothing to be done about it. At the convent Sister Maria Maddelena told him that Sister Annunziata could see no one. She had been ill for a week and quite out of her head. In her illness she had gone about saying such astounding and scandalous things that they thought it better to keep her in seclusion until the poor thing had recovered her senses.

Mr. Winnery, somewhat cast down, hired a fiacre and set out for Monte Salvatore. He felt that in all the confusion of the superstition and madness it would be refreshing to talk with a woman of hard, common sense like Signora Bardelli.

As Mr. Winnery made his entrance Signora Bardelli was just receiving forty lira from a pretty young peasant woman who had spent the night on the bed of Miss Annie Spragg. The woman was telling her story for the third time. She had been married seven years and although she had prayed to all the saints of fertility there had been no answer to her prayer. Her husband was growing impatient. He already had a child outside of wedlock and he was fonder of this child than of his wife. The woman wept a little and Signora Bardelli assured her with all the authority and brightness of