Down to this moment I thought I had been alone, but now the Reverend Mother entered my room, and she joined me. I heard her deep rich voice under mine:
"Mater castissima
Ora pro nobis."
Then I thought the Ora ended, and in the silence that followed it I heard Christian Arm talking to baby on the gravel path below. I had closed my eyes, yet I seemed to see them, for I felt as if I were under some strange sweet anæsthetic which had taken away all pain but not all consciousness.
Then I thought I saw Martin come close under my window and lift baby up to me, and say something about her.
I tried to answer him and could not, but I smiled, and then there was darkness, in which I heard voices about me, with somebody sobbing and Father Dan saying, as he did on the morning my mother died:
"Don't call her back. She's on her way to God's beautiful paradise after all her suffering."
After that the darkness became still deeper, and the voices faded away, and then gradually a great light came, a beautiful, marvellous, celestial light, such as Martin describes when he speaks about the aurora, and then . . . I was on a broad white snowy plateau, and Martin was walking by my side.
How wonderful! How joyful! How eternally glorious!
It is 4 A.M. Some of "the boys" will be on their way to my wedding. Though I have been often ashamed of letting them come I am glad now for his sake that I didn't try to keep them back. With his comrades about him he will control himself and be strong.