Excerpt from Jane-Our Stranger: A Novel Tonight, Good Friday night, I can hear the good sisters in the chapel singing. The mysticism of their haunting chant penetrates the walls of this old house, and tonight because of their lamenting, because of their dread disciplined agony of supplication, the street is immensely deep and high, whereas yesterday it was just small and dim and worldly, with its houses blinking over its walls, a proud battered de ceiving old street, hiding the rare beauty of its dwellings, guarding the secrets of its families behind' mute shutters, till the day it should crumble to pieces or an inso lent government should turn it upside down like an ash bin. It never, of course, could get used to Jane. Who of us did get used to Jane? Did I myself? Wasn't she a big troubling problem to us all till the very end? How could we not be afraid of her? Poor magnificent Jane - fine timid innocent child - dangerous nature woman - dreadful crying message from a new bellowing land - what was she? What was she not? How could she fit in here? She was as strange here as a leopard beautifully moving down the grey narrow pavement. How she used to frighten the good Abbe. I have seen him scuttle into a neighbouring doorway to let her pass, as if there were no room for him along the stones she walked so grandly. It was true. There was no room for any one but Jane when she came, and now that she is gone never to come back again, the place is as dreary and empty as an abandoned cemetery and the light is as insip idly pale as the half shadow in a sick room. She has left a sickness in this place, because she came here sometimes to see me - and won't come any more. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.