To be away from Meaux bodily was, it appeared, only that the imagination might have freer exercise.  Yes,—­now the people must be moving through the streets; shopmen were not so intent on profits this day as they were on other days.  The priests were thinking with vengeful hate of the wrong to themselves which should be met and conquered that day.  The people should be swiftly brought into order again!  John in his prison was preparing, as all without the prison were.

The crowd was gathering fast.  He would soon be led forth.  The shameful march was forming.  Now the brutal hand of Power was lifted with scourges.  The bravest man in Meaux was driven through the streets,—­she saw with what a visage,—­she knew with what a heart.  Her heart was awed with thinking thereupon.  A bloody mist seemed to fall upon the environs of Meaux; through that red horror she could not penetrate; it shrouded and it held poor Jacqueline.

Of the faith that would sustain him she began once more to inquire.  It is not by a bound that mortals ever clear the heights of God.  Step by step they scale the eminences, toiling through the heavenly atmosphere.  Only around the summit shines the eternal sun.

So she must now recall the words that Victor Le Roy read for her last night; and the words he spoke from out his heart,—­these also.  And she did not fear now, as yesterday, to ask for light.  Let the light dawn,—­oh, let it shine on her!

The mother of Leclerc had uttered mysterious words which Jacqueline took for truth; the light was joyful and blessed, and of all things to be desired, though it smote the life from one like lightning.  She waited alone with faith, watching till it should come,—­left alone with this beam glimmering like a moth through darkness!—­for thus was a believer, or one who resolved on believing, left in that day, when he turned from the machinery of the Church, and stood alone, searching for God without the aid of priestly intervention.

VI.

There was something awful in such loneliness.

Jacqueline knew little of it until now, as she walked toward the fields, by the side of Elsie Meril.

She saw how she had depended on the priest of Domremy, as he had been the lawgiver and the leader of her life.  A spiritual life, to be sustained only by the invisible spirit, to be lived by faith, not in man, but in God, without intervention of saint or angel or Blessed Virgin,—­was the world’s life liberated by such freedom?

By faith, and not by sight, the just must live.  Would He bow his heavens and come down to dwell with the contrite and the humble?

Wondrous strange it seemed,—­incomprehensible,—­more than she could manage or control.  There are prisoners whose pardon proves the world too large for them:  they find no rest until their prison-door is opened for them again.