"And Love showed me the hearts of my brothers in the crowd. And, last of all, he showed me myself, with whom I had lived in ignorance. And I was humbled.
"And then Love, who had given me all, asked for all. And I gave reverence, and patience, and faith, and hope, and intuition, and service. I even gave him truth. I put my hands under his feet. But he said it was not enough. So I gave him my heart. That was the last I had to give.
"And Love took it in a great tenderness and smote it. And in the anguish the human face of Love vanished away.
"And afterwards, long years afterwards, when I was first able to move and look up, I saw Love, who, as I thought, was gone, keeping watch beside me. And I saw his face clear, without the human veil between me and it. And it was the Face of God. And I saw that Love and God are one, and that, because of His exceeding glory, He had been constrained to take flesh even as Christ took it, so that my dim eyes might be able to apprehend Him. And I saw that it was He and He only who had walked with me from the first."
Anne laid down the book. She looked fixedly out across the quiet gardens, with their long shadows, to the still, sun-lit woods beyond. Her face changed, as the face of one who, in patient endurance, has long rowed against the stream, and who at last lets the benign, constraining current take her whither it will. The look of awed surrender seldom seen on a living face, seldom absent from the faces of the newly dead, rested for a moment on Anne's.
"I don't think," said Janet, "I quite understand what it means, because I was not sure whether it was a lady or a gentleman that was speaking."
Anne started violently, and turned her colourless face towards the voice. It seemed to recall her from a great distance. She had forgotten Janet. She had been too far off to hear what she had said.