“I’m not gentle. Certainly not a gentlewoman. “I’m not coarse--no! But I’ve got no purity of mind--no real purity of mind. A good woman’s mind has angels with flaming swords at the portals to keep out fallen thoughts.... “I wonder if there are any good women really. “I wish I didn’t swear. I do swear. It began as a joke.... It developed into a sort of secret and private bad manners. It’s got to be at last like tobacco-ash over all my sayings and doings.... “‘Go it, missie,’ they said; “kick aht!’ “I swore at that policeman--and disgusted him. Disgusted him! “For men policemen never blush; A man in all things scores so much... “Damn! Things are getting plainer. It must be the dawn creeping in. “Now here hath been dawning another blue day; I’m just a poor woman, please take it away. “Oh, sleep! Sleep! Sleep! Sleep!” Part 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--that’s 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!” Part 3