s laid hold of her intelligence and imagination, drawing, moulding,
enlightening her. In the library of a somewhat grim hotel at Avila, in
old Castile, she lighted upon an English translation of the life of St.
Theresa--that woman of countless practical activities, seer and sybil,
mystic and wit. The amazing biography set her within the magic circle of
Christian feminine beatitude; and opened before her gaze mighty
perspectives of spiritual increase, leading upward through unnumbered
ranks of prophets, martyrs, saints, angelic powers, to the feet of the
Virgin Mother, with the Divine Child on her arm.--He, this last, as
gateway, intermediary, between the human soul and the mystery of God
Almighty, by whom, and in whom, all things visible and invisible subsist.
For the first time some dim and halting perception, some faintest hint
and echo, reached Damaris of the awful majesty, the awful beauty of the
fount of Universal Being; and, caught with a great trembling, she
worshipped.

This culminating perception, in terms of time, amounted to no more than a
single flash, the fraction of an instant's contact. An hour or so later,
being very young and very human, the things of everyday resumed their
sway. A new dress engaged her fancy, a railway journey through--to
her--untrodden country excited her, a picturesque street scene held her
delighted interest. Nevertheless that had taken place within her--call it
conversion, evocation, the spiritual receiving of sight, as you
please--upon which, for those who have once experienced it, there is no
going back while life and reason last. Obscured, overlaid, buried beneath
the dust of the trivial and immediate, the mark of revelation upon the
forehead and the heart can never be obliterated quite. Its resurrection
is not only possible but certain, if not on the near side, then surely on
the farther side of death.

And not only did faith thus call her, at this period, but art, in its
many forms, called her likewise. The two, indeed, according to her
present understanding of them, moved--though at different levels--side by
side, singularly conjoined, art translating faith into terms of sound,
form and colour, faith consecrating and supplementing art. All of which,
as she pondered, appeared to her only fitting and reasonable--the object
of art being to capture beauty and touch reality, the substance of faith
being nothing less than beauty and reality absolute.

With Sir Charles sometimes,