The
appeal formed itself as it were without her own agency.
"God--if there is a God--give me Martin. I care for nothing else but
that. If You will give me Martin for my own always, ever, I will
believe in You. I will worship You and say prayers to You, and do
anything You tell me if You give me Martin. Oh God! I ought to have
him. He is mine. I can do more for him than any one else can--I can
make him happy and good. I know I can. God give him to me and I will
be your slave. God, give me Martin--God, give me Martin."
She rose, as it were, from the depths of the sea, from great
darkness and breathlessness and exhaustion. For a moment she could
not see the room nor any detail, but only one pale face after
another, like a pattern on a wall, hiding something from her.
She stood bewildered beside her aunts, not hearing the strains of
the last hymn nor the quaver of Aunt Anne's trembling voice beside
her.
"God, give me Martin," was her last challenge in the strange pale
silence that floated around her. Then suddenly, as though she had
pushed open a door and gone through, she was back in the world
again, a flood of sound was about her ears, and in front of her the
red face of Mrs.
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