Guido
tolled through the stillness for the first mass.
For though even Father Francis looked angered at her because he thought
she was stubborn, and hid some truth and some shame from him at
confession, yet she went resolutely and oftener than ever to kneel in the
dusty, dusky, crumbling old church, for it was all she could do for him
who was absent--so she thought--and she did not feel quite so far away
from him when she was beseeching Christ to have care of his soul and of
his body.
All her pretty dreams were dead.
She never heard any story in the robin's song, or saw any promise in the
sunset clouds, or fancied that angels came about her in the night--never
now.
The fields were gray and sad; the birds were little brown things; the
stars were cold and far off; the people she had used to care for were
like mere shadows that went by her meaningless and without interest, and
all she thought of was the one step that never came: all she wanted was
the one touch she never felt.
"You have done wrong, Bebee, and you will not own it," said the few
neighbors who ever spoke to her.
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