don't know much about God,
anyway," she went on a bit forlornly; not irreverently, but as if pain
had burned off the shell of conventions and reserves of every day, and
actual facts lay bare. "I don't feel as if He were especially
real--and the case I'm in is awfully real. I don't know if He would
mind my killing myself--and if He would, wouldn't He understand I just
have to? If He's really good? But then, if He was angry, might He
punish me forever, afterward?" She drew her shoulders together with a
frightened, childish movement. "I'm afraid of forever," she said.

The rain beat in noisily against the parish house wall; the wet vines
flung about wildly; a floating end blew in at the window and the young
man lifted it carefully and put it outside again. Then, "Can you tell
me why you want to kill yourself?" he asked, and his manner, free from
criticism or disapproval, seemed to quiet her.

"Yes. I want to tell you. I came here to tell the rector." The grave
eyes of the man, eyes whose clearness and youth seemed to be such an
age-old youth and clearness as one sees in the eyes of the sibyls in
the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel--eyes empty of a thought of self,
impersonal, serene with the serenity of a large atmosphere--the
unflinching eyes of the man gazed at the girl as she talked.

She talked rapidly, eagerly, as if each word lifted pressure. "It's
this way--I'm ill--hopelessly ill. Yes--it's absolutely so. I've got
to die. Two doctors said so. But I'll live--maybe five
years--possibly ten. I'm twenty-three now--and I may live ten years.
But if I do that--if I live five years even--most of it will be as a
helpless invalid--I'll have to get stiff, you know." There was a
rather dreadful levity in the way she put it. "Stiffer and
stiffer--till I harden into one position, sitting or lying down,
immovable. I'll have to go on living that way--years, you see. I'll
have to choose which way. Isn't it hideous? And I'll go on living
that way, you see. Me. You don't know, of course, but it seems
particularly hideous, because I'm not a bit an immovable sort. I ride
and play tennis and dance, all those things, more than most people. I
care about them--a lot." One could see it in the vivid pose of the
figure. "And, you know, it's really too much to expect. I _won't_
stiffen gently into a live corpse. No!" The sliding, clear voice was
low, but the "no" meant itself.

From the quiet figure by the wi