in unbroken succession, lasting in all some few hours.

"I had no grief or no dis-ease," she tells us later, "as long as the
fifteen showings lasted in showing. And at the end all was close, and I
saw no more; and soon I felt that I should live longer." Presently all
her pains, bodily and spiritual, return in full force; and the
consolation of the visions seems to her as an idle dream and delusion;
and she answers to the inquiries of a Religious at her bedside, that she
had been raving: "And he laughed loud and drolly. And I said: 'The cross
that stood before my face, methought it bled fast.'" At which the other
looked so serious and awed that she became ashamed of her own
incredulity. "I believed Him truly for the time that I saw Him. And so
it was then my will and my meaning to do, ever without end--but, as a
fool, I let it pass out of my mind. And lo! how wretched I was," &c.
Then she falls asleep and has a terrifying dream of the Evil One, of
which she says: "This ugly showing was made sleeping and so was none
other," whence it seems that her self-consciousness was unimpaired in
the other visions; that is, she was aware at the time that they were
visions, and did not confound them with reality as dreams are
confounded. Then follows the sixteenth and last revelation; ending with
the words: "Wit well it was no raving thou sawest to-day: but take it,
and believe it, and keep thee therein, and comfort thee therewith and
trust thereto, and thou shalt not be overcome." Then during the rest of
the same night till about Prime next morning she is tempted against
faith and trust by the Evil One, of whose nearness she is conscious; but
comes out victorious after a sustained struggle. She understands from
our Lord, that the series of showings is now closed; "which blessed
showing the faith keepeth, ... for He left with me neither sign nor
token whereby I might know it." Yet for her personally the obligation
not to doubt is as of faith: "Thus am I bound to keep it in my faith;
for on the same day that it was showed, what time the sight was passed,
as a wretch I forsook it and openly said that I raved."

Fifteen years later she gets an inward response as to the general gist
and unifying purport of the sixteen revelations. "Wit it well; love was
His meaning. Who showed it thee? Love. Wherefore showed He it thee? For
love."

Having thus sketched the circumstances of the revelations, we may now
address ourselves to their character