After Mrs Connor had gone, Joy was for a long time in meditation, and then turned in a mechanical manner to her delayed task. Her book of “Impressions” lay on a table close at hand.
And as she took it up the leaves opened to the sentence she had written three years before, after her talk with the rector about Marah Adams.
“It seems to me I could not love a man who did not seek to lead me higher; the moment he stood below me and asked me to descend, I should realise he was to be pitied, not adored!”
She shut the book and fell on her knees in prayer; and as she prayed a strange thing happened. The room filled with a peculiar mist, like the smoke which is illuminated by the brilliant rays of the morning sun; and in the midst of it a small square of intense rose-coloured light was visible. This square grew larger and larger, until it assumed the size and form of a man, whose face shone with immortal glory. He smiled and laid his hand on Joy’s head. “Child, awake,” he said, and with these words vast worlds dawned upon the girl’s sight. She stood above and apart from her grosser body, untrammelled and free; she saw long vistas of lives in the past through which she had come to the present; she saw long vistas of lives in the future through which she must pass to gain the experience which would lead her back to God. An ineffable peace and serenity enveloped her. The divine Presence seemed to irradiate the place in which she stood—she felt herself illuminated, transfigured, sanctified by the holy flame within her.
When she came back to the kneeling form by the couch, and rose to her feet, all the aspect of life had changed for her.
CHAPTER XXI
Joy Irving had unpacked her trunks and set her small apartment to rights, when the postman’s ring sounded, and a moment later a letter was slipped under her door.
She picked it up, and recognised Arthur Stuart’s penmanship. She sat down, holding the unopened letter in her hands.
“It is Arthur’s message, appointing a time and place for our meeting,” she said to herself. “How long ago that strange interview with him seems!—yet it was only yesterday. How utterly the whole of life has changed for me since then! The universe seems larger, God nearer, and life grander. I am as one who slept and dreamed of darkness and sorrow, and awakes to light and joy.”
But when she opened the envelope and read the few hastily written lines within, an exclamation of surprise escaped her lips. It was a brief note from Arthur Stuart and began abruptly without an address (a manner more suggestive of strong passion than any endearing words).