"But," began Berenice, "I should think"--
"If it had been something dangerous, so that I had had to think of her life," went on her cousin, not heeding, "I could have borne it; but that common thing! Why, her face looked like a drunken cook's! I can't tell you the humiliation of it!"
"But if she could help you, why not herself?"
"I've tried to think that out," answered she. "It was always said of the old witches, you know, that they couldn't help themselves. It is faith in somebody else that is behind the wonders they do. I've grown very wise in the last few weeks, Bee. I don't pretend that I understand all the facts, but I do know pretty well what the facts are. I believed in Mrs. Crapps, and that belief kept me up. When I couldn't believe in her, that was the end of it."
There seemed to Berenice something uncanny and monstrous in this calm acquiescence. She could not comprehend how her cousin could give up the struggle for life in this fashion, after having succeeded so long in holding death at bay.
"But surely," she protested, "you can't be willing to let everything depend upon her. You've proved the possibility"--
"I've proved the possibility of depending upon somebody else; that's all."
"Then find another woman that you can believe in."
"It is too late. I can't have the faith over again. I should always be expecting another humiliating downfall of my prophetess."
She was silent a moment, and then continued:--
"Do you know, Bee, it seems to me after all that my experience is like almost all religion. There are a few men and women who believe in themselves in that self-poised way that makes it possible for them to get on with just ethics; and there are those who can take hold of unseen things; but for the rest of us it's necessary to have some human being to lean on. I hope I don't shock you. I lie awake in the night a good deal, and my mind seems clearer than it used to be. All the religions seem to have a real, tangible human centre, a personality that human beings can appreciate and believe in. Mrs. Crapps was so real and so near at hand that I could have faith in her; now that that is gone there isn't anything left for me. I can't believe in her, and she has destroyed the Possibility of my believing in anybody else."