At a Girl's Mercy, or, The Fortunes of War — page 81: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

70 AT A GIRLS MERCY. he might have been free from the South by then. He was a kind lover, very kind, and he would be sorry, so sorry she was dead. She felt the close touch of his hand on her arm, and looked up slowly with a vague sense that she would like to see what he looked like—this lover, who was so kind—and found no one there, no one in all the terrible room | but this strange, still woman, who would be dead by to-morrow. Her heart must be dead, she thought, for she had no special feeling save an unmoved sor- row for the girl who was to die so soon, and she so young and blameless, save a wish to help her sister women, one of whom would betray her. She knelt down to pray, and then looked up out of the tiny window close under the roof, and wondered —and the smile was still on her face—why she was down there? She didn’t know how to pray; she wasn’t a child any more, and only children prayed. A cold, dead woman like her couldn’t pray; she had no feeling, and one couldn’t pray without that. Oh, yes, there was a God—she was quite sure there was a. God, but she couldn’t just place Him. He wasa terrible Being miles and miles away from her, whom she could not reach if she tried,.-and why should she try when she was dead? Dead people did not pray; they were either with God or away from Him, and she was sure she was not with Him. No, she was not dead either; but she was turning into stone, and would be dead before to-morrow. The poor girl! It was too bad, and she so young. But she had prayed. Oh, yes, she had prayed. She remembered now that she had prayed all the night through to this God miles and miles away, and He hadn’t heard her,‘and she would soon be dead. She had prayed for life and her lover, or that ~ €omicbooks.co