They did so, but waited still full ten minutes before the tinkle of the silver bell was heard on the stairs. Sœur Lucie told me this incident was not such a rare occurrence with the dying; that frequently they announce the approach of the Blessed Sacrament when the priest is yet a long way off, as if their senses were quickened by some spiritual faculty that is only awakened in death. The solemn, magnificent rite was performed, but it was too late to think of Holy Communion. The priest gave the last absolution and began the prayers for the dying. Before he had finished them the long struggle was over. Mme. Martin was at rest.
About five weeks after her death I received a letter from Millicent, informing me that she had become a Catholic. “It has been all so quickly done; I seem to have been so completely taken up and lifted into the church,” she said, “that I cannot help thinking some powerful supernatural agent has been at work all along overruling my own will. I had no more idea of becoming a Catholic than I had of turning Mohammedan—although all my sympathies had been quite gained over to the church by you and Mme. Martin—when one evening I went to act Racine’s Athalie at the house of a friend here. When it was all over, and the people were crowding round me with compliments and congratulations, a gentleman, a Catholic priest, came up and spoke to me; he thought I was a Catholic, and began at once to discourse on the grandeur of the Bible narrative and Racine’s interpretation of it. I undeceived him as soon as I had the chance; he seemed sorry and surprised, but went on talking very pleasantly, and, when we were saying good-evening, I said: 'My mother will be happy to see you, M. l’Abbé, if you would not object to call upon a heretic!’ I cannot to this day tell what moved me to say this. The next moment I thought I must have been out of my mind. He replied good-humoredly that he was not afraid of heretics, and was very glad when they were not afraid of him. My dear Lilly, if the heretics only knew, they would fly from that man as the devil does from holy water! He came to see us next day; it so happened mamma was out, so I saw him alone. I met him several times again, and—well, dear, before the month was out I was a Catholic. When I look back on it, it seems to me that I was in a dream, and that I was led on and on without any conscious will or action of my own, but just let myself follow the lead of some invisible attraction, some magnet that drew me in spite of myself, and here I am safe in St. Peter’s net and happily landed in his bark. Are people often converted in this way? Tell me if the church has invisible fishermen who go about casting nets and catching wayward, silly souls thus, or is it a special dispensation of mercy invented for me?”
“Dear, grateful Mme. Martin! How quickly and well you have executed my commission! Make haste and fulfil the others now!” I cried out to my dead friend on reading Millicent’s letter. She has kept me waiting for the other two; but I have not a doubt they will come in good time.
You can imagine Sybil’s feelings on hearing of this event. I shall certainly not attempt to depict them. Yet, in the midst of her genuine displeasure, there was a high note of satisfaction—the exultation of a prophet who had lived to see his prophecy fulfilled. I am sure this was a great comfort to her. We did not quarrel, though she let me plainly see she looked upon me as a kind of spiritual murderer. On the other hand, she took a more merciful view of it: It was to be, it was written; I was the appointed, or the permitted, instrument of Millicent’s destiny, and if I had not come some one else would; Millicent was doomed from the beginning.
In the spring my fears were realized: the doctor and Mrs. Segrave and Sybil sailed away to New York.
A few days before they left Paris Sybil burst into my room in high excitement.
“Will you believe it!” she cried. “Mr. Halsted has taken his place in the Tiger and is going back with us!”
“Well, and why not?” I said. “You and he will have delightful opportunities for discussing life on deck every day.”
Soon after their arrival I had a letter from her informing me that they had discussed it to the issue I had long since foreseen: she was to be married to him in a month.