Her voice fell softly, to a note of dream.
'That was an omen,' he said, after a pause, 'an omen of peace.'
'I don't know,—but it soothed! As to what may be true, Father,—you can't be certain any more than I! But at least our dreams are true—to us.'… 'We make the heaven we hope indeed our home! All to the good if we wake up in it after all! If not, the dream will have had its own use here. Why should we fight so with our ignorance? The point is, as to the quality of our dreams! The quality of mine was once all dark—all misery. Now, there is a change,—like the change from London drizzle and rain to the clearness of this sky, which gives beauty to everything beneath it. But, for me, it is not the first time—no, not the first—'
The words were no longer audible, her hands pressed against each other, and he traced that sudden rigidity in her dim face which meant that she was defending herself against emotion.
'It is all true, my friend,' he said, bending over her,—'the gospel of
Christ. You would be happier if you could accept it simply.'
She opened her eyes, smiling, but she did not reply. She was always eager that he should read and talk to her, and she rarely argued. But he never felt that intellectually he had much hold upon her. Her mind seemed to him to be moving elusively in a sphere remote and characteristic, where he could seldom follow. Anima naturaliter Christiana; yet with a most stoic readiness to face the great uncertainties, the least flattering possibilities of existence: so she often appeared to him.
Presently she dragged herself higher in her chair to look at the moon rising above the eastern mass of the convent.
'It all gives me such extraordinary pleasure!' she said, as though in wonder—'The moon—the fire-flies—those beautiful woods—your kindness—Lucy in her white dress, when I see her there at the door. I know how short it must be; and a few weeks ago I enjoyed nothing. What mystery are we part of?—that moves and changes without our will. I was much touched, Father, by all you said to me that great, great day; but I was not conscious of yielding to you; nor afterwards. Then, one night, I went to sleep in one mind; I woke up in another. The "grace of God," you think?—or the natural welling back of the river, little by little, to its natural bed? After all I never wilfully hurt or defied anybody before—that I can remember. But what are "grace" and "nature" more than words? There is a Life,—which our life perpetually touches and guesses at—like a child fingering a closed room in the dark. What else do we know?'
'We know a great deal more,' he said firmly. 'But I don't want to weary you by talking.'
'You don't weary me. Ah!'—her voice leapt—'what is true—is the "dying to live" of Christianity. One moment, you have the weight of the world upon you; the next, as it were, you dispose of the world and all in it. Just an act of the will!—and the thing verifies itself like any chemical experiment. Let me go on—go on!' she said, with mystical intensity. 'If the clue is anywhere it is there,—so far my mind goes with you. Other races perceive it through other forms. But Christ offered it to us.'