"I have a message for you," were the words I heard. "Tell her that I know what she would tell me: I have been made to know it here, where all things are clear: tell her that my forgiveness is as large as the heaven to which I have been permitted to enter in. Give her of the love that I did not when I might have done it."
The Hand was offered to her. Pleadingly, she looked up at it. For a moment my eyelids were heavy. When the weight was lifted, only one figure remained upon the celestial canvas. I could not see the countenance thereof: hands were clasped tightly over it.
"One more message the Lord permits for earth," said a touching, trembling, praying voice. "Say unto one sinning, that I have prayed unto the Christ that died for him,—that his mother is always praying for her son. Find out his sin, and solace his soul with the knowledge of my prayers."
The angel-wing that had cleaved the sky to let this picture in lifted her upon its pinions, and bore her through the azure, and I saw the great Hand open, as of one casting out many seeds upon the earth. Again an angel-wing swept its way among the clouds, and folds of opaline glow pavilioned the entrance into cerulean heights, and a solemn voice uttered these words out of the great All-Where around me:—
"I am the Lord thy God. I will show thee the way wherein I would have thee to walk. Rest thy soul in my love, and it shall satisfy thee."
With heart and soul and voice, my all of being cried out.—
"Only let Thy hand hold me!"
I awoke with one of those awful heart-exciting starts that come in sleep, such as a new planet might give when first projected into its orbit, before centrifugal and centripetal forces have time to exert their influences. I wonder what it is. Can it be a misstep, in the darkness, into the abyss between the land of waking and the land where there are nor years nor months nor days, where the soul abides in Lethe,—save when some wing troubles the waters for a little while?
I was wearied, with the weariness of one having come from long journeying. I closed my eyes again, and tried to sleep. Chloe looked in at me.
"Have you had a nice sleep, Miss Anna?" she asked, as I moved at her coming.