their feet an icy wind which touched her hands and feet and chilled her
heart. She shivered too, and drew close to the rock for shelter, and
gazed at the awful cliffs rising out of the gloom, and the paths that
disappeared at her feet, leading down, down into that abyss; and her
heart failed within her to think that below there were souls that
suffered, and that the Father and the Son were not there. He, the
All-loving, the All-present,--how could it be that He was not there?

'It is a mystery,' said the man who was her guide, and who answered to
her thought. 'When I set my foot upon this blessed land I knew that
there, even there, He is. But in that country His face is hidden, and
even to name His name is anguish,--for then only do men understand what
has befallen them, who can say that name no more.'

'That is death indeed,' she cried; and the wind came up silent with a
wild breath that was more awful than the shriek of a storm; for it was
like the stifled utterances of all those miserable ones who have no voice
to call upon God, and know not where He is nor how to pronounce His name.

'Ah,' said he, 'if we could have known what death was! We had believed in
death in the time of all great illusions, in the time of the gentle life,
in the day of hope. But in the land of darkness there are no illusions;
and every man knows that though he should fling himself into the furnace
of the gold, or be cut to pieces by the knives, or trampled under the
dancers' feet, yet that it will be but a little more pain, and that death
is not, nor any escape that way.'

'Oh, brother!' she cried, 'you have been there!'

He turned and looked upon her; and she read as in a book things which
tongue of man cannot say,--the anguish and the rapture, the
unforgotten pang of the lost, the joy of one who has been delivered
after hope was gone.

'I have been there; and now I stand in the light, and have seen the face
of the Lord, and can speak His blessed name.' And with that he burst
forth into a great melodious cry, which was not like that which he had
sent into the dark depths below, but mounted up like the sounding of
silver trumpets and all joyful music, giving a voice to the sweet air and
the fresh winds which blew about the hills of God. But the words he said
were not comprehensible to his companion, for they were in the sweet
tongue which is between the Father and His child, and known to none but
to them alone. Yet only to hear the sou