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215 STRAIT IS THE GATE

24th September. Oh, torturing conversation in which I succeeded in feigning indifference - coldness, when my heart was fainting within me! Up till now I had contented myself with avoiding him. This morning I was able to believe that God would give me strength to be victorious and that to slink for ever out of the combat was to prove myself a coward. Did I triumph? Does Jerome love me a little less? Alas! I both hope and fear it together. I have never loved him more. And if it is Thy Will, Lord, that to save him from me I must compass my own perdition, so be it. “Enter into my heart and into my soul in order to bear in them my sufferings and to continue to endure in me what remains to Thee to suffer of Thy Passion."


We spoke of Pascal . . . . What did I say ? What shameful, foolish words? I suffered even as I uttered them, but to-night I repent them as a blasphemy. I turned again to the heavy volume of the Pensées, which opened of itself at this passage in the letters to Mademoiselle de Roannez:

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