could solve it.

* * * * *

AUGUST 3. I am growing weaker every day. No pain; no cough; nothing but
exhaustion. Father Dan told me this morning that I was growing more than
ever like my mother--that "sweet saint whom the Lord has made his own."
I know what he means--like her as she was at the last.

My poor old priest is such a child! A good old man is always a child--a
woman can see through and through him.

Ah, me! I am cared for now as I never was before, yet I feel like baby
when she is tired after walking round the chairs and comes to be nursed.
What children we all are at the end--just children!

* * * * *

AUGUST 4. Father Dan came across, in breathless excitement to-day. It
seems the poor soul has been living in daily dread of some sort of
censure from Rome through his Bishop--about his toleration of me, I
suppose--but behold! it's the Bishop himself who has suffered censure,
having been sent into quarantine at one of the Roman Colleges and
forbidden to return to his diocese.

And now, lo! a large sum of money comes from Rome for the poor of Ellan,
to be distributed by Father Dan!

I think I know whose money it is that has been returned; but the dear
Father suspects nothing, and is full of a great scheme for a general
thanksgiving, with a procession of our village people to old St. Mary's
and then Rosary and Benediction.

It is to come off on the afternoon of the tenth, it seems, my last day
in Ellan, after my marriage, but before my departure.

How God governs everything!

* * * * *

AUGUST 6. It is really wrong of me to allow Martin to go on. This
morning he told me he had bought the special license for our marriage,
and this evening he showed me our tickets for Sydney--two berths, first
cabin, steadiest part of the ship. Oh, my dear heart, if you only knew
that I have had my ticket these many days, and that it is to take me out
first on the Great Expedition--to the still bigger Unknown, the
Everlasting Sea, the Immeasurable Eternity!

I must be brave. Although I am a little cowardly sometimes, I _can_ be
brave.

I have definitely decided to-night that I will tell him. But how can I
look into his face and say. . . .

* * * * *

AUGUST 7. I have made up my mind to write to Martin. One can say things
so much easier in a letter--I can, anyway. Even my voice affects
me--