Mireille!
Mireille had stood motionless, almost cataleptic, with her fear-maddened eyes fixed upon the dark spot which was the door. Now—now it was opening! it was opening! A white light had streamed suddenly under the curtain.
Yes. The door was opening.... Now Mireille would die! She knew it! What she was going to see would kill her, as it had killed her soul before.
Gasping, with open mouth, with clenched hands, she saw the gap of light widen beneath the moving curtain.... Now ... now.... The curtain had slid back. There was a dazzling square of light....
And in that light stood a Vision.
Bathed in the rays of the moon, swathed in shimmering azure stood a Mother with her Child. Behind her head glowed a luminous silver circle.
Ah! Well did Mireille know her! Well did Mireille remember her. All fear was gone, all darkness swept away in the rapture of that dazzling presence.
Mireille stretched out her clasped hands towards that effulgent vision. What were the words of greeting she must say? She knew them well ... they were rising in her throat.... What were they? What were they?
She wrung her clasped hands, with a spasm in her throat, but the words would not come. She knew them. They seemed to burst open like flowers of light in her brain, to peal like the notes of an organ in her soul, yet her lips were locked and could not frame them.