n, and she could not listen to
Mother Philippa's conversation, for she had been suddenly taken with a
desire to say one last prayer in the chapel. She must say one more
prayer in the presence of the Sacrament. So, excusing herself, she ran
back, and, kneeling down, she buried her face in her hands. At once all
her thoughts hushed within her; it was like bees entering a hive to make
honey. Prayer came to her without difficulty, without even asking, and
she enjoyed almost five minutes' breathless adoration.

The three nuns kissed her, and as the Reverend Mother hung the medal
round her neck, she told her that prayers would be constantly offered up
for her preservation. The chestnuts plunged at starting.... If she were
killed now it would not matter. But the horses soon settled down into
their long swinging trot of ten miles an hour, and all the way to London
she reflected. The Reverend Mother had said that the prayers of nuns and
monks were the wall and bastion tower which saved a sinful world from
the wrath of God, and she thought of the fume of prayer ascending night
and day from this convent as from a censer. Men had always prayed, since
the beginning of things men had prayed, and as Ulick had said, wisdom
was not invented yesterday. He agreed with the naturalistic philosophers
that force is indestructible, only objecting that the naturalistic
philosophers did not go far enough, the theory of the indestructibility
of force being equally applicable to the spiritual world. The world
exists not in itself, but in man's thought.... Often an intense
evocation has brought the absent one before the seer's eyes, and that
there are sympathies which transcend and overrule the laws of time and
space hardly admits of doubt. Life is but a continual hypnotism; and the
thoughts of others reach us from every side, determining in some measure
our actions. It was therefore certain that she would be influenced by
the prayers that would be offered up for her by the convent. She
imagined these prayers intervening between her and sin, coming to her
aid in some moment of perilous temptation, and perhaps in the end
determining the course of her life.

THE END

_Printed and Made in Great Britain by
The Crypt House Press Limited
Gloucester and London_

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Evelyn Innes, by George Moore

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