pon her brain; where there was darkness there was light. He saw her
walk suddenly forward. She threw herself upon her knees at the table,
and like one to whom speech had suddenly come back, she said--

"I believe in our holy Church and all that she teaches. Father, I
beseech you to absolve me from my sins."

So striking was the change that the priest himself was cowed by it, and
his personal pride in his conquest of her soul was drowned in a great
awe. He had first to thank God for having chosen him as the instrument
of his will, and then he spoke to Evelyn of the wonder and magnitude of
God's mercies. That at the very height of her artistic career he should
have roused her to a sense of her own exceeding sinfulness was a miracle
of his grace.

His presence by her at that moment was a balm. She heard him say that
life would not be an easy one, but that she must not be discouraged,
that she must remember that she had made her peace with God, and would
derive strength from his sacraments. An extraordinary sweetness came
over her, she seemed borne away upon a delicious sweetness; she was
conscious of an extraordinary inward presence. She did not dare to look
up, or even to think, but buried herself in prayer, experiencing all the
while the most wonderful and continuous sensation of delight. She had
been racked and torn, and had fallen at his feet a helpless mass of
suffering humanity. He had healed her, and she felt hope and life
returning to her again, and sufficient strength to get up and continue
her way. Never again would she be alone; he would be always near to
guide her. She heard him tell her that she must recite daily for penance
the hymn _veni sanctus spiritus_, and the thought of this obedience to
him refreshed her as the first draught of spring water refreshes the
wanderer who for weeks has hesitated between the tortures of thirst and
the foul water of brackish desert pools. She was conscious that he was
making the sign of the cross over her bowed head, the murmured Latin
formula sounded strangely familiar and delicious in her ears, with the
more clearly enunciated "_Ego te absolvo_" towards the close. In that
supreme moment for which she had longed, the last traces of Owen's
agnostic teaching seemed to fall from her, and she was carried back to
the days of her girlhood, to the days of her old prayer-book, a "Garden
of the Soul" bound in ivory; and she rose from her knees, weak, but
happy as a convalescent.