akness, too, to call only for the
priest! It was ludicrous, absurd! She herself was filled with an
extraordinary peace. Even death itself seemed now no longer terrible,
for was not death swallowed up in victory? She contrasted the selfish
individualism of the Christian, who sobbed and shrank from death, or, at
the best, thought of it only as the gate to his own eternal life, with
the free altruism of the New Believer who asked no more than that Man
should live and grow, that the Spirit of the World should triumph and
reveal Himself, while he, the unit, was content to sink back into that
reservoir of energy from which he drew his life. At this moment she
would have suffered anything, faced death cheerfully--she contemplated
even the old woman upstairs with pity--for was it not piteous that death
should not bring her to herself and reality?

She was in a quiet whirl of intoxication; it was as if the heavy veil of
sense had rolled back at last and shown a sweet, eternal landscape
behind--a shadowless land of peace where the lion lay down with the
lamb, and the leopard with the kid. There should be war no more: that
bloody spectre was dead, and with him the brood of evil that lived in
his shadow--superstition, conflict, terror, and unreality. The idols
were smashed, and rats had run out; Jehovah was fallen; the wild-eyed
dreamer of Galilee was in his grave; the reign of priests was ended. And
in their place stood a strange, quiet figure of indomitable power and
unruffled tenderness.... He whom she had seen--the Son of Man, the
Saviour of the world, as she had called Him just now--He who bore these
titles was no longer a monstrous figure, half God and half man, claiming
both natures and possessing neither; one who was tempted without
temptation, and who conquered without merit, as his followers said. Here
was one instead whom she could follow, a god indeed and a man as well--a
god because human, and a man because so divine.

She said no more that night. She looked into the bedroom for a few
minutes, and saw the old woman asleep. Her old hand lay out on the
coverlet, and still between the fingers was twisted the silly string of
beads. Mabel went softly across in the shaded light, and tried to detach
it; but the wrinkled fingers writhed and closed, and a murmur came from
the half-open lips. Ah! how piteous it was, thought the girl, how
hopeless that a soul should flow out into such darkness, unwilling to
make the supreme, gen