Page:Encounters (Bowen).djvu/98

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ALL SAINTS


anybody says and helps other people; really makes it possible for other people to go on living?"

"Well, yes." The Vicar hesitated over this definition.

"Don't saints seem always very strong?"

"There is a great strength in them, but there is weakness too; they have a great deal in themselves to combat before——"

"Before they can fight other people's battles."

"Nobody can fight another's battle! We have got to fight our battles for ourselves—against ourselves."

"Oh," she said a little flatly, "now that wasn't my idea. When I'm in a difficulty, or even in the blues, I just go to one of these friends of mine and talk it out, and, well, it's quite extraordinary the difference I feel. I see light at once. It's as if they took a burden off my shoulders."

"There is only One who can do that. Can't you try and get straight to the Divine?"

Her voice out of the darkness—it was now very dark—sounded lonely and bewildered.

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