"If there is a God, He must be awfully unjust," she said bitterly. "If there is a God, why did He create us with barriers around us which we cannot break down, and which we long to break down? Why did He give us longings which we cannot satisfy?"
Again she seemed struggling for speech, and I knew there was something in her mind which she wanted to express but could not.
"Tell me," she said, "were you really serious when you said you thought the doctor's verdict was soon to be fulfilled?"
"And you think you are going to die soon?" Her voice was hoarse and unnatural.
"And yet you are here talking with me about it calmly."
"It cannot be! It cannot be!" she cried passionately. "You must not die."
"If I could believe what John Searle believes, I should not care," was my answer. "If I could believe that this life is only a fragment of life--that death is only the door by which we enter another life, the fulfilment of this life; if I could believe that at the back of everything is an Omnipotent, All-Wise, Ever-Loving, Beneficent God, I should not mind death, I think I should laugh at it. Then what we call death would not be death at all. That is my difficulty."
"Yes, I have an intense longing to live. I have a passion for life. But what can I do? When the poison of death is in one's system and science knows no means whereby that poison can be destroyed, all is hopeless."
"No, he said nothing could save me. Yesterday I felt as though I could not die, as though life was strong within me. To-day life seems only a matter of hours."
"And yet you are able to think and talk and walk."
"Yes, that is the mockery of it. Do you believe in premonitions, Miss Lethbridge?"
"Yes, premonitions. I have a feeling that within a few hours I shall be dead."
She stood looking at me wonderingly. Never had I seen her look so fair, so wondrously fair, as she looked that morning, in spite of the fact that she showed marks of having suffered greatly. As she had said, I could not understand her. In one sense she seemed my ideal of what a woman ought to be. Even although I knew the shadow of death was creeping over me, I felt the power of her presence; felt that it would be bliss to love and be loved by such a woman. But I knew she had no love to give me; knew she had tried to play with my heart as she had played with the hearts of others.