A deferential insolence lay behind the
affected meekness.
"For those who believe no doubt it is helpful," I smiled. "True religion
brings peace and happiness, I'm sure--joy, Mrs. Marsh, joy!" I found
keen satisfaction in the emphasis.
She looked at me like a knife. I cannot describe the implacable thing
that shone in her fixed, stern eyes, nor the shadow of felt darkness
that stole across her face. She glittered. I felt hate in her. I knew--
she knew too--who was in the thoughts of us both at that moment.
She replied softly, never forgetting her place for an instant:
"There is joy, sir--in 'eaven--over one sinner that repenteth, and in
church there goes up prayer to Gawd for those 'oo--well, for the others,
sir, 'oo--"
She cut short her sentence thus. The gloom about her as she said it was
like the gloom about a hearse, a tomb, a darkness of great hopeless
dungeons. My tongue ran on of itself with a kind of bitter satisfaction:
"We must believe there are no others, Mrs. Marsh. Salvation, you know,
would be such a failure if there were. No merciful, all-foreseeing God
could ever have devised such a fearful plan--"
Her voice, interrupting me, seemed to rise out of the bowels of the
earth:
"They rejected the salvation when it was offered to them, sir, on
earth.
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