Broader and brighter before her shafted that penetrating Light whose rays she had seen to reach the soddenest scenes of Earth and the dankest depths of the Lower Land. Now it dispersed the shadows from her dreading heart and darkened mind.
Her former nescience, then, had not mattered to the Great-I-Am! He had known her all along; had deplored her plight; had awaited her wish for an introduction. That restraint which so had fascinated her in one of Earth was but an impulse from infinite restraint. No longer need she fear for the fate of the Universe. The All-Power which had restrained itself toward her that she might work out her own development, would strike when the souls of men cried out, even as she had cried, their dependence. Come The Day, His Majesty would fail of his own impotency. Faith, then, was not the fear of fools. Faith was the courage of gods and men, a heritage divine.
No voice of sad women or of sobbing winds was Dolores’ as, peering and hurrying, her joy lifted in fragments of lines learned from a singer on Earth.
“Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom....”
Now a flash of white through whiteness, she sped and sang:
“The night is dark and I am far from home....”
Into the land of hope—into air so vital that realization seemed already reached—into a life of no more sorrows, no more tears——
“Lead Thou me on.”
From neither sun nor moon came the glory that lit the girl-soul’s way. She knew and knew. “Home” the Light was leading her. From it she had come. To it she now was returned.
The strength of that Hell she had fled was only hate.