The day was a close, foggy, cold, dreary day. The service at church had
not seemed interesting. She laid the blame on herself, and neither on
prayers nor lessons nor psalms nor preacher, though in truth some of
these might have been better; the heart seemed to have gone out of the
world--as if not Baal but God had gone to sleep, and his children had
waked before him and found the dismal gray of the world's morning full
of discomfortable ghosts. She tried her New Testament; but Jesus too
seemed far away--nothing left but the story about him--as if he had
forgotten his promise, and was no longer in the world. She tried some of
her favourite poems: each and all were infected with the same
disease--with common-place nothingness. They seemed all made up--words!
words! words! Nothing was left her in the valley but the shadow, and the
last weapon, All-prayer. She fell upon her knees and cried to God for
life. "My heart is dead within me," she said, and poured out her lack
into the hearing of him from whom she had come that she might have
himself, and so be. She did not dwell upon her sorrows; even they had
sunk and all but vanished in the gray mass of lost interest.
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