eme hour of trial she performed the
greatest feat of which the soul is capable. She defied her own nature;
she committed an act of sacred violence against the most clamorous
propensities of her heart.

What that struggle cost her no mortal mind can know. That in her
decision she chose the better part some will doubt. The most common
justification of our conduct is that we have followed the "dictates of
our natures." But because those natures are double, and the good and
evil perpetually struggle for the mastery, we are sometimes compelled
to reverse their most strenuous demands.

Those lofty souls who are enabled to perceive their duty clearly and to
commit bravely this act of sacred violence must always remain a mystery
to those who meanly live upon a lower plane of existence.

It was as certain when this pure soul entered upon her renewed struggle
to find the path of duty that she would succeed, as that the carrier
pigeon, launched into an unknown region, will find the homeward way; but
for a little time she fluttered her wings in ignorance and despair; she
found no rest for the soles of her feet, and the ark of refuge was
nowhere to be seen.

The nearness of her lover, she could see him in the street; his sorrow,
she could behold his white face even by the pale light of the moon; his
tender love, whose real depth she had never for a moment doubted; his
bitter agony, which she knew she could terminate in a single instant,
all appealed to her with an indescribable power. Her own sorrow and
loneliness were eclipsed by the consciousness of the sorrow and
loneliness of the man whom she loved more than life. She felt the pain
in his bosom far more than in her own; but this feeling which added so
much to her suffering became a clear interpreter of her duty.

She acted from a single, undivided impulse; it was to do him good and
bring to him the final beatitude of life. She saw as clearly as when the
facts about this tragedy were flashed upon her that her presence in
David's life would be a perpetual source of irritation, and that so long
as he possessed her he would never be able to face the truly spiritual
problems which remained to be solved.

How she acquired those powers of divination is a mystery. Such women
possess a certain prescience that cannot wholly be accounted for. What
Pepeeta did was right because she was Pepeeta. It does not follow that
because such natures see so clearly that they act with less pain th