among them, and all her heart cried out in joy and
praise. And suddenly the cross shone out in a rosy radiance brighter
than all, and from head to foot and from arm to arm of it the light
flowed and flashed, and joined and passed and parted, in the holy sign.
From itself came forth a melody, in which she was rapt and swept upwards
as though she were herself a wave of the glorious sound. But of the
words, three only came to her, and they were these: Arise and
conquer![1]

[1: A free translation of some passages in the fourteenth canto
of Dante's _Paradiso_.]

Then all was still and calm again, and she was kneeling at her chair,
the sight still in her inward eyes, the words still ringing in her
heart, but herself awake again.

She knew the vision now that it was past; for often, reading the
matchless verses of the "Paradise," she had intensely longed to see as
the dead poet must have seen before he could write as he wrote. It did
not seem strange that her hope should have been fulfilled at last in the
church of the Holy Cross. Her lips formed the words, and she spoke them,
consciously in her own voice, sweet and low:

"Arise and conquer!"

It was what she had prayed for--the peace, the strength, the knowledge;
it was all in that little sentence. She rose to her feet, and stood
still a moment, and her face was calm and radiant, like the faces of the
heavenly beings she had looked upon. There was a world before her of
which she had not dreamt before, better than that ancient one that had
vanished and in which she had been a Vestal Virgin, more real than that
mysterious one in which she had floated between two existences, and
whence the miserable longing for an earthly body had brought her back to
be Cecilia Palladio, and to fight again her battle for freedom and
immortality.

It mattered little that her prayer should have been answered by the
imagined sight of something described by another, and long familiar to
her in his lofty verse. The prayer was answered, and she had strength to
go on, and she should find wisdom and light to choose the right path.
Henceforth, when she was weak and weary, and filled with loathing of
what she dreaded most, she could shut her eyes as she had done just now,
and pray, and wait, and the transcendent glory of paradise would rise
within her, and give her strength to live, and drive away that power of
evil that hurt her, and made night frightful, and day but a long waiting
for the nigh