Page:The Eleventh Virgin.pdf/25

them with her fists and bite them and pull their hair till they lost their tempers and fought back.

For a while it had seemed that no hiding-place was safe. If she put the diary under her mattress and locked the door of her bedroom, they would climb on the shed above the kitchen and in at the window, or they would pry open the door of the bedroom with a knife. Then they would read it, with their heads together over the fire, and giggle and learn passages of it by heart, to recite later. As furious as June became, however, she never ceased keeping it, because she was lonesome and the little red book was her only comfort. Finally a place was found for it underneath the carpet of the back stairs and then she felt safe.

This was an emotion more sacred than God and the little Jesus. It must be concealed from everyone, even from herself; only when she was alone, out under the trees in the park with her face pressed to the grass and her body clutching the warm throbbing earth or when she was in her room at night with all the lights out—only then, could she let the hurrying thoughts and desires swarm through her mind, leaving her body aching and trembling.

She had had attachments before, but in retrospect they seemed dully insipid. There was none of the early companionship which she had enjoyed with her mother. Mother Grace no longer called her a