Joan had
met her once or twice since then. She was still in the chorus. Neither
of them spoke for a few minutes.
"I have been expecting every morning to find her gone," said the girl. "I
think she only waited to finish this." She gently unfolded the fine lawn
robe, and they saw the delicate insertion and the wonderful, embroidery.
"I asked her once," said the girl, "why she wasted so much work on them.
They were mostly only for poor people. 'One never knows, dearie,' she
answered, with that childish smile of hers. 'It may be for a little
Christ.'"
They would not let less loving hands come near her.
* * * * *
Her father had completed his business, and both were glad to leave
London. She had a sense of something sinister, foreboding, casting its
shadow on the sordid, unclean streets, the neglected buildings falling
into disrepair. A lurking savagery, a half-veiled enmity seemed to be
stealing among the people. The town's mad lust for pleasure: its fierce,
unjoyous laughter: its desire ever to be in crowds as if afraid of
itself: its orgies of eating and drinking: its animal-like indifference
to the misery and death that lay but a little way beyond its own horizon!
She dared not remember history.
Pages:
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467