makes me sit down
and listen to him, and I believe all he says. We always sit on that
bench near the fountain in my villa. He tells me that he loves me much
better than Guido does, and that he is much better able to protect me
than Guido. He says that his heart is breaking because he loves me and
is Guido's friend, and he looks thin and worn, just as he does in real
life. When I dream of him, I do not mind the glittering in his eyes, but
when I meet him it frightens me. Of course, it is quite impossible that
he should know how I dream of him now. Yet, I am sure he knew all about
the other vision. He said very little, but I am sure of it, though I
cannot explain it. This is much worse than the other. But if I go back
to the other, I shall be doing wrong, because I shall be consenting; and
now I am not doing wrong, because it happens against my will, and I go
to sleep praying that it may never happen again, and I am in earnest.
God help me! I know that when I sit beside him on the bench I love him!
And yet he is the only man in all the world whom I wish never to meet
again. God help me!"

Her head sank upon her folded hands at last, and her eyes were closely
shut. She threw her whole soul into the appeal to heaven for help and
strength, till she believed that it must come to her at once in some
real shape, with inspired wisdom and the comfort of the Holy Spirit. She
had never before in her life prayed as she was praying now, with heart
and soul and mind, though not with any form of words.

Then came a moment in which she thought of nothing and waited. She knew
it well, that blank between one state and the other, that total
suspension of all her faculties just before she began to see an unreal
world, that breathless stillness of anticipation before the supreme
moment of change. She was quite powerless now, for her waking will was
already asleep.

The instant was over, and the vision had come, but it was not what she
had always seen before. It was something strangely familiar, yet
beautiful and high and clear. Her consciousness was in the midst of a
world of light, at peace; and then, all round her, a brightness stole
upwards as out of a clear and soft horizon, more radiant than the light
itself that was already in the air. And as when evening creeps up to the
sky the stars begin to shine faintly, more guessed at than really seen,
so she began to see heavenly beings, growing more and more distinct, and
she was lifted up