While they were there, with their enticement and their memories, prayer
would never come. But did she want to pray? Did she desire the mood
of that poor soul in her black shawl, who had not moved by one hair's
breadth since she had been watching her, who seemed resting her humble
self so utterly, letting life lift from her, feeling the relief of
nothingness? Ah, yes! what would it be to have a life so toilsome, so
little exciting from day to day and hour to hour, that just to kneel
there in wistful stupor was the greatest pleasure one could know? It was
beautiful to see her, but it was sad. And there came over Anna a longing
to go up to her neighbour and say: "Tell me your troubles; we are both
women." She had lost a son, perhaps, some love--or perhaps not really
love, only some illusion. Ah! Love.... Why should any spirit yearn, why
should any body, full of strength and joy, wither slowly away for want
of love? Was there not enough in this great world for her, Anna, to have
a little? She would not harm him, for she would know when he had had
enough of her; she would surely have the pride and grace then to let
him go. For, of course, he would get tired of her. At her age she could
never hope to hold a boy more than a few years--months, perhaps. But
would she ever hold him at all? Youth was so hard--it had no heart!
And then the memory of his eyes came back--gazing up, troubled, almost
wild--when she had dropped on him those flowers. That memory filled her
with a sort of delirium. One look from her then, one touch, and he
would have clasped her to him. She was sure of it, yet scarcely dared
to believe what meant so much. And suddenly the torment that she must go
through, whatever happened, seemed to her too brutal and undeserved! She
rose. Just one gleam of sunlight was still slanting through the doorway;
it failed by a yard or so to reach the kneeling countrywoman, and Anna
watched. Would it steal on and touch her, or would the sun pass down
behind the mountains, and it fade away? Unconscious of that issue, the
black-shawled figure knelt, never moving. And the beam crept on. "If it