They were like huge mole-hills, rounded and smooth, an they rose from the plain abruptly.
Dr. Macphail remembered how it struck him that they were like a woman`s breasts.
Davidson`s restlessness was intolerable even to himself.
But he was buoyed up by a wonderful exhilaration.
He was tearing out by the roots the last vestiges of sin that lurked in the hidden corners of that poor woman`s heart.
He read with her and prayed with her.
"It`s wonderful," he said to them one day at supper.
"It`s a true rebirth.
Her soul, which was black as night, is now pure and white like the new-fallen snow.
I am humble and afraid.
Her remorse for all her sins is beautiful.
I am not worthy to touch the hem of her garment."
"Have you the heart to send her back to San Francisco?" said the doctor.
"Three years in an American prison.
I should have thought you might have saved her from that."
"Ah, but don`t you see?
It`s necessary.
Do you think my heart doesn`t bleed for her?
I love her as I love my wife and my sister.
All the time that she is in prison I shall suffer all the pain that she suffers."
"Bunkum," cried the doctor impatiently.
"You don`t understand because you`re blind.
She`s sinned, and she must suffer.
I know what she`ll end-dure.
She`ll be starved and tortured and humiliated.
I want her to accept the punishment of man as a sacrifice to God.
I want her to accept it joyfully.
She has an opportunity which is offered to very few of us.
God is very good and very merciful."
Davidson`s voice trembled with excitement.
He could hardly articulate the words that tumbled passionately from his lips.
"All day I pray with her and when I leave her I pray again, I pray with all my might and main, so that Jesus may grant her this great mercy.
I want to put in her heart the passionate desire to be punished so that at the end, even if I offered to let her go, she would refuse.
I want her to feel that the bitter punishment of prison is the thank-offering that she places at the feet of our Blessed Lord, who gave his life for her."
The days passed slowly.
The whole household, intent on the wretched, tortured woman down-stairs, lived in a state of unnatural excitement.
She was like a victim that was being prepared for the savage rites of a bloody idolatry.
Her terror numbed her.
She could not bear to let Davidson out of her sight; it was only when he was with her that she had courage, and she hung upon him with a slavish dependence.
She cried a great deal, and she read the Bible, and prayed.
Sometimes she was exhausted and apathetic.
Then she did indeed look forward to her ordeal, for it seemed to offer an escape, direct and concrete, from the anguish she was enduring.
She could not bear much longer the vague terrors which now assailed her.
With her sins she had put aside all personal vanity, and she slopped about her room, unkempt and dishevelled, in her tawdry dressing-gown.
She had not taken off her nightdress for four days, nor put on stockings.
Her room was littered and untidy.
Meanwhile the rain fell with a cruel persistence.
You felt that the heavens must at last be empty of water, but still it poured down, straight and heavy, with a maddening iteration, on the iron roof.
Everything was damp and clammy.
There was mildew on the wail and on the boots that stood on the floor.