a hidden
foe fling shafts from an ambush in the rear, even there that Unseen
Presence would be behind her as a shield. "Lo I am with you always,
even unto the end of the world."

Strong in this most human vision of the Divine, she had come down from
the Holy Mount, prepared to face the dumb demon she dreaded, the silent
acquiescence in deception, which threatened to tear her happiness,
bruise her spirit, and cast into the fire and into the waters to
destroy them, those treasures which her heart had lately learned to
hold so dear.

Prepared for this, she came; and lo, Heaven granted her the second
vision. She saw deep into the heart of a true man's faithfulness; an
example of chivalry, of profound reverence for holy things, which
shamed her doubts of him; a self-sacrifice which lifted the great human
love, to which she, in her cloistered sanctity, had pictured herself as
stooping, far above her, to the ideal of the divine. Was not this
indeed a Vision of Truth?

Crossing the room, Mora laid the robes she carried upon the couch.
While mounting the stairs she had planned, in the secret of her own
chamber, to clothe herself in them once again, to hang her jewelled
cross about her neck, and thus--once more Prioress of the White
Ladies--to kneel at our Lady's shrine, and implore guidance in this
final decision. But now, she laid them gently down upon the bed.

She could not stand fast in this new liberty, with the heavy folds of
that white habit entangling her feet in a yoke of bondage.

The heart, filled with a love so full of glowing tenderness for her
Knight of the Silver Shield proved worthy, could not beat beneath a
scapulary. Nor could her cross of office lie where his dear head had
rested.

She stood before the shrine. The Madonna looked gravely upon her. The
holy Babe gazed with omniscient eyes, holding forth tiny hands of
omnipotence.

Even so had they looked in her hour of joy, when she had kneeled in a
transport of thanksgiving.

Even so had they looked in her hour of anguish, when she had poured out
her despair at having been twice deceived.

Yet help had not come, until she had lifted her eyes unto the hills.

She turned from the shrine, went swiftly to the open casement, and
stood looking over the green tree tops, to the heavenly blue beyond,
flecked by swift moving clouds.

She, who had now learned to "look . . . at the things that are not
seen," could not find help through gazing on carv