Was there a beyond?--where were they?--those poor ghosts! All the riddles
of the eternal Sphinx leaped upon Marcia--riddles at last made real.
Twenty-four hours ago, two brains, two hearts, alive, furiously alive, with
human sorrow and human revolt. And now? Had that infinitely pitiful Christ
in whom Newbury believed, received the two tormented souls?--were they
comforted--purged--absolved? Had they simply ceased to be--to feel--to
suffer? Or did some stern doom await them--still--after all the suffering
here? A shudder ran through the girl, evoking by reaction the memory of
immortal words--"_Her sins which are many are forgiven; for she loved
much_." She fed herself on the divine saying; repressing with all her
strength the skeptical, pessimistic impulses that were perhaps natural to
her temperament, forcing herself, as it were, for their sakes, to hope and
to believe.
Again, as the afternoon wore away, she was weighed down by the surrounding
silence. No one in the main pile of building but her mother and herself.
Not a sound, but the striking of the great gilt clock outside. From her own
room she could see the side windows of her mother's sitting-room; and once
she thought she perceived the stately figure passing across them.
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