Don Aloysius turned to look at her, but said nothing. She laughed.
"Dear Father Aloysius, what a wise priest you are! Not a word falls from those beautifully set lips of yours! If you were a fool—(so many men are!) you would have repeated my phrase, 'the inside of a sun-ray,' with an accent of scornful incredulity, and you would have stared at me with all a fool's contempt! But you are not a fool,—you know or you perceive instinctively exactly what I mean. The inside of a sun-ray!—it was disclosed to me suddenly—a veritable miracle! I have seen it many times since, but not with all the wonder and ecstasy of the first revelation. I was so young, too! I told a renowned professor at one of the American colleges just what I saw, and he was so amazed and confounded at my description of rays that had taken the best scientists years to discover, that he begged to be allowed to examine my eyes! He thought there must be something unusual about them. In fact there IS!—and after his examination he seemed more puzzled than ever. He said something about 'an exceptionally strong power of vision,' but frankly admitted that power of vision alone would not account for it. Anyhow I plainly saw all the rays within one ray—there were seven. The ray itself was—or so I fancied—the octave of colour. I was little more than a child when this 'interval' of happiness—PERFECT happiness!—was granted to me—I felt as if a window had been opened for me to look through it into heaven!"
"Do you believe in heaven?" asked Aloysius, suddenly.
She hesitated.
"I used to,—in those days. As I have just said I was only a child, and heaven was a real place to me,—even the angels were real presences—"
"And you have lost them now?"
She gave a little gesture of resignation.
"They left me"—she answered—"I did not lose them. They simply went."
He was silent. His fine, calm features expressed a certain grave patience, but nothing more.
She resumed—