THE STEADFAST HEART
obscene. He writhed, he cried out—but there was no comfort, no ear to which he could cry for mercy…. A word of Alvin’s caught his ear, “Make your peace with God….” To make peace he could understand; to make his peace with a human being—to come to an arrangement, an amicable settlement of differences…. But he was not going into the power of a God who hated him. Titus knew God hated him…. He pictured God in this first moment in years which he had given up to a consideration of Divinity, as a God capable of hatred and of revenge—of some awful, mysterious revenge far beyond the power of the most malignant mortal hands to visit upon him…. To make his peace with God—to reach a composition with this Being—to dicker—to save himself from tortures which he could only visualize as physical!…
“How… How?…” he gasped.
Alvin explained patiently, gently, the theory of his religion; the promise of repentance—the guarantee of repentance by the performance of a righteous act…. Titus did not wait for him to finish. To his fevered mind it seemed an opportunity was offered him to trade his secret with God for his release from torture…. “I’ll swap!… I’ll swap!” he cried. “I’l tell—fetch Wilkins. Fetch Browning.”
“But repentance—”
336
