To the sonorous rushing and wild dash of the waters is joined the deep melodious voice of the priest, urging her to give him a token from his flowers; and the chimes now seem to swell into joyful choruses of jubilant anthems as she gives him the sweet token.
After the fury of the storm had abated, the priest left them and set off to confess himself to the Archbishop of the Ecclesiastical Court; and the women returned home.
The first thing Nang Rungeah did was to relate to her mother all that had befallen her from the time she entered the chapel of Tâmsèng to her return home. She then took the "dangerous book" from under her pillow and laid it on a high shelf out of her reach, but put in its place her crumpled flowers. Then she knelt down and repeated her fifty paternosters with lessening fervor, and tried to believe that she was a better woman. But how was it that her thoughts would stray from the morrow's bright vision, when she would publicly be baptized into the Church of Christ, to the dark face of Maha Sâp and the tenderness she had seen in his eyes.
She shut herself up in her chamber to weep and pray in agonizing doubts and fears, because of that something which has come between her and her beautiful P'hra Jesu.
AD OGNI UCCELLO SUO NIDO È BELLO,—"TO EVERY BIRD ITS OWN NEST IS CHARMING."
When Rungeah awoke on the following morning, it seemed to her that she had just thrown off some wondrous and powerful spell that had somehow girt its strong and mysterious illusions about her heart. A new soul from within that inmost chamber had started into life. She faltered, hesitated, and dropped on her knees and raised her eyes towards heaven, and felt as she had never done before.
In her visions—strange contradiction of human nature—and in her holiest thoughts of the beloved Mother and her Son, the face of the priest of Buddha would intrude.