Poor Grace, the tortures that she suffered during those weeks will not be understood by persons with self-confidence and a hearty contempt for superstition.
She paid the penalty now for the ghosts of her childhood--and no one could help her.
Maggie saw that Paul was, with every day, increasingly unhappy.He had never been trained to conceal his feelings, and although he tried now he succeeded very badly.He would come into her room in the early morning hours and lie down beside her.He would put his arms around her and kiss her, and, desperately, as though he were doing it for a wager, make love to her.She felt, desperate also on her side, that she could comfort and make him happy, if only he would want something less from her than passion.But always after an hour or a little more, he crept away again to his own room, disappointed, angered, frustrated.These hours were the stranger because, during the day, he showed her nothing of this mood, but was kindly and friendly and distant.
She would have done anything for him; she tried sometimes to be affectionate to him, but always, at once, he turned upon her with a hungry, impassioned look...
She knew, without any kind of doubt, that the only way that she could make him happy again was to leave him.His was not a nature to brood, for the rest of his days, on something that he had lost.
Only once did he make any allusion to the coming Revival services.