As an inspiration the thought of Carolina flashed through Ragna's mind.
"Doctor," she said, "there is that girl I promised to help, she is coming here to see me to-morrow,--she might do for a servant for me--at any rate, I should have no need to feel ashamed before her, she knows what it is to be unhappy, and it would be a way of redeeming my promise."
"You might do worse--we can certainly consider the question. Send the girl to me, I will speak to her, and make some inquiries about her. If she proves to be a suitable person, we can take her back to Florence with us."
"How kind you are to me, dear Dr. Ferrati! I don't know what I should do without you, nor how I shall ever thank you!"
"I wish there was more I could do, my poor child! If you want to please me, be brave and gather up all your strength. We all have our hard times to live through, and we must do it as best we can. You are very young, remember, and life lies before you,--you will have many bright and happy days yet--"
Ragna smiled bitterly, and made no answer.
"I think you had better stop in bed, and I shall come again to-morrow. I will tell Fru Bjork that you are not to talk or be disturbed." He took her hand and stroked it gently. "Don't worry and reproach yourself, my child; regretting the past will undo none of the mischief, one must go forward and face the future. Looking backward never does any good; if all the strength wasted in repentance and vain regrets were turned into a wholesome resolve to make the future better than the past! Ah, my dear, the Church has much to be responsible for, in fostering introspection and useless repentance as virtues! Virtues indeed! they sap the strength and muddle the brain, and make one weak and mawkish! Face the future, and make the best of it, that is the true morality!" He smiled whimsically down at the girl. "See how my tongue runs away with me, when I mount one of my hobbies! We shall have long discussions in future, you and I,--and I think you will find that life is not such a bad affair after all!"
He left Ragna much benefited by his cheery optimism, and kindly manner.
"At least I have one real friend," she thought, and then her mind turned to Angelescu. He had meant well by her, he had tried to help her,--would he, if he could have foreseen all? His earnest face with the serious steadfast eyes rose before her mental vision, and she knew that nothing would have made any difference to him. The impulse seized her to write to him, to recall him--but no, that was impossible, she had refused his offer twice, and so decisively that reconsideration was impossible, even if present circumstances had not precluded such a thought. No, as she had made her bed, so must she lie in it. She fell into a state of self-pity, in which she saw herself the victim of adverse circumstance, about to be crushed by the juggernaut-car of fatality, broken and cast out! The flagrant injustice that she alone should suffer the penalty, while Mirko went scot free, seared her soul, but it caused her, nevertheless, a sort of pride. Her sufferings made him appear but a poor creature in his careless detachment from moral responsibility, and in the abstract, the idea of shouldering the whole of the burthen alone, gave her an odd sense of exhilaration. She said defiantly to herself: