August First | Page 3

really and truly thought it was wrong for a
person to kill herself. I can't see why." She glanced at the attentive,
quiet figure at the window. "Do you think so?" she asked. He looked at
her, but did not speak. She went on. "Why is it wrong? They say God
gives life and only God should take it away. Why? It's given--we don't
ask for it, and no conditions come with it. Why should one, if it gets
unendurable, keep an unasked, unwanted gift? If somebody put a ball
of bright metal into your hands and it was pretty at first and nice to play
with, and then turned red-hot, and hurt, wouldn't it be silly to go on
holding it? I don't know much about God, anyway," she went on a bit
forlornly; not irreverently, but as if pain had burned off the shell of
conventions and reserves of every day, and actual facts lay bare. "I
don't feel as if He were especially real--and the case I'm in is awfully
real. I don't know if He would mind my killing myself--and if He
would, wouldn't He understand I just have to? If He's really good? But
then, if He was angry, might He punish me forever, afterward?" She
drew her shoulders together with a frightened, childish movement. "I'm
afraid of forever," she said.
The rain beat in noisily against the parish house wall; the wet vines
flung about wildly; a floating end blew in at the window and the young
man lifted it carefully and put it outside again. Then, "Can you tell me
why you want to kill yourself?" he asked, and his manner, free from
criticism or disapproval, seemed to quiet her.
"Yes. I want to tell you. I came here to tell the rector." The grave eyes
of the man, eyes whose clearness and youth seemed to be such an
age-old youth and clearness as one sees in the eyes of the sibyls in the
frescoes of the Sistine Chapel--eyes empty of a thought of self,

impersonal, serene with the serenity of a large atmosphere--the
unflinching eyes of the man gazed at the girl as she talked.
She talked rapidly, eagerly, as if each word lifted pressure. "It's this
way--I'm ill--hopelessly ill. Yes--it's absolutely so. I've got to die. Two
doctors said so. But I'll live--maybe five years--possibly ten. I'm
twenty-three now--and I may live ten years. But if I do that--if I live
five years even--most of it will be as a helpless invalid--I'll have to get
stiff, you know." There was a rather dreadful levity in the way she put
it. "Stiffer and stiffer--till I harden into one position, sitting or lying
down, immovable. I'll have to go on living that way--years, you see. I'll
have to choose which way. Isn't it hideous? And I'll go on living that
way, you see. Me. You don't know, of course, but it seems particularly
hideous, because I'm not a bit an immovable sort. I ride and play tennis
and dance, all those things, more than most people. I care about them--a
lot." One could see it in the vivid pose of the figure. "And, you know,
it's really too much to expect. I won't stiffen gently into a live corpse.
No!" The sliding, clear voice was low, but the "no" meant itself.
From the quiet figure by the window came no response; the girl could
see the man's face only indistinctly in the dim, storm-washed light;
receding thunder growled now and again and the noise of the rain came
in soft, fierce waves; at times, lightning flashed a weird clearness over
the details of the room and left them vaguer.
"Why don't you say something?" the girl threw at him. "What do you
think? Say it."
"Are you going to tell me the rest?" the man asked quietly.
"The rest? Isn't that enough? What makes you think there's more?" she
gasped.
"I don't know what makes me. I do. Something in your manner, I
suppose. You mustn't tell me if you wish not, but I'd be able to help you
better if I knew everything. As long as you've told me so much."
There was a long stillness in the dim room; the dashing rain and the

muttering thunder were the only sounds in the world. The white dress
was motionless in the chair, vague, impersonal--he could see only the
blurred suggestion of a face above it; it got to be fantastic, a dream, a
condensation of the summer lightning and the storm-clouds; unrealities
seized the quick imagination of the man; into his fancy came the low,
buoyant voice out of key with the words.
"Yes, there's more. A love story, of course--there's always that. Only
this is more an un-love story, as far as I'm