o watched with her,
the perfect calm as of a summer night. Suffering had all but reached the
brim of her life's cup, and a hand had emptied it! She raised her head,
half rose, and looked around her. A moment more, and she stood erect,
with the air of a conqueror: she had won the battle! Dareful she had met
her spiritual foes; they had withdrawn defeated! She raised her withered
arm above her head, a paean of unholy triumph in her throat--when
suddenly her eyes fixed in a ghastly stare.--What was she seeing?

I looked, and saw: before her, cast from unseen heavenly mirror, stood
the reflection of herself, and beside it a form of splendent beauty, She
trembled, and sank again on the floor helpless. She knew the one what
God had intended her to be, the other what she had made herself.

The rest of the night she lay motionless altogether.

With the gray dawn growing in the room, she rose, turned to Mara, and
said, in prideful humility, "You have conquered. Let me go into the
wilderness and bewail myself."

Mara saw that her submission was not feigned, neither was it real. She
looked at her a moment, and returned:

"Begin, then, and set right in the place of wrong."

"I know not how," she replied--with the look of one who foresaw and
feared the answer.

"Open thy hand, and let that which is in it go."

A fierce refusal seemed to struggle for passage, but she kept it
prisoned.

"I cannot," she said. "I have no longer the power. Open it for me."

She held out the offending hand. It was more a paw than a hand. It
seemed to me plain that she could not open it.

Mara did not even look at it.

"You must open it yourself," she said quietly.

"I have told you I cannot!"

"You can if you will--not indeed at once, but by persistent effort. What
you have done, you do not yet wish undone--do not yet intend to undo!"

"You think so, I dare say," rejoined the princess with a flash of
insolence, "but I KNOW that I cannot open my hand!"

"I know you better than you know yourself, and I know you can. You have
often opened it a little way. Without trouble and pain you cannot open
it quite, but you CAN open it. At worst you could beat it open! I pray
you, gather your strength, and open it wide."

"I will not try what I know impossible. It would be the part of a fool!"

"Which you have been playing all your life! Oh, you are hard to teach!"

Defiance reappeared on the face of the princess. She turned her back on
Mara, say