Entering her room, Gulielma Mallison found Anna fully dressed, standing in a stream of sunshine, with a brighter light than that of the sun upon her face.
“Oh, mother!” she cried, stretching out both her hands, “I can live. I can sleep. I can even cry now. Oh, these tears! how they have fallen like rain on a thirsty ground. See, mother; after all I am young still and strong. Feel my pulse, how full it is this morning, how strong and steady! I am at peace. The peace of God has come to me at last. Keith has comforted me.”
CHAPTER XXXVIII
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
To spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won
God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.
—Sidney Lanier.
While we are not to forget that we have fallen, we are not always to carry the mud with us; the slough is behind, but the clean, clearly defined road stretches ahead of us; skies are clear, and God is beyond. We were made for purity, truth, and fidelity, and the very abhorrence of the opposite of these qualities bears testimony that our aspirations are becoming our attainments. The really noble thing about any man or woman is not freedom from all the stains of the lower life, but the deathless aspirations which forever drive us forward.... Better a thousand times the eager and passionate fleeing to God from a past of faults and weaknesses, with an irresistible longing to rest in the everlasting verities, than the most respectable career which misses this profound impulse.
—Anon.