2
“Now,” said Ann Veronica, after the half-hour of
exercise, and sitting on the uncomfortable wooden seat
without a back that was her perch by day, “it's no
good staying here in a sort of maze. I've got nothing
to do for a month but think. I may as well think. I
ought to be able to think things out.
“How shall I put the question? What am I? What
have I got to do with myself? . . .
“I wonder if many people have
thought things out?
“Are we all just seizing hold of phrases and obeying
moods?
“It wasn't so with old-fashioned people, they knew
right from wrong; they had a clear-cut, religious faith
that seemed to explain everything and give a rule for
everything. We haven't. I haven't, anyhow. And
it's no good pretending there is one when there isn't. . . .
I suppose I believe in God. . . . Never really thought about
Him —people don't. . . . I suppose my creed is, `I believe
rather indistinctly in God the Father Almighty,
substratum of the evolutionary process, and, in a vein of
vague sentimentality that doesn't give a datum for anything
at all, in Jesus Christ, His Son.' . . .
“It's no sort of good, Ann Veronica, pretending one
does believe when one doesn't. . . .
“And as for praying for faith —this sort of monologue
is about as near as any one of my sort ever gets to prayer.
Aren't I asking —asking plainly now? . . .
“We've all been mixing our ideas, and we've got
intellectual hot coppers —every blessed one of us. . . .
“A confusion of motives —thats what I am! . . .
“There is this absurd craving for Mr. Capes —the
`Capes crave,' they would call it in America. Why do I
want him so badly? Why do I want him, and think
about him, and fail to get away from him?
“It isn't all of me.
“The first person you love, Ann Veronica, is yourself
—get hold of that! The soul you have to save is Ann
Veronica's soul. . . .”
She knelt upon the floor of her cell and clasped her
hands, and remained for a long time in silence.
“Oh, God!” she said at last, “how I wish I had been
taught to pray!”
