Doubtless, saints can be made in other ways, but this is one way they can be made, starting with a sincere intention to serve God.  At least, so I believe, from knowing Sister Madeline.

She made a great change in my life, and I owe her a great deal.  It is not strange I feel enthusiasm for her.  I cannot bear to think what my coming back to life would have been without her.

Of the alarming nature of my illness, I only know that there were several days when Richard never left the house, but waited, hour after hour, in the library below, for the news of my condition, and when even Uncle Leonard came home in the middle of the day, and walked about the house, silent and unapproachable.

One night—­how well I remember it!  I had been convalescent, I do not know how long; I had passed the childish state of interest in my bouilli, and fretfulness about my peignoir; my mind had begun to regain its ordinary power, and with the first efforts of memory and thought had come fearful depression and despondency.  I was so weak, physically, that I could not fight against this in the least.  Sister Madeline came to my bedside, and found me in an agony of weeping.  It was not an easy matter to gain my confidence, for I thought she knew nothing of me, and I was not equal to the mental effort of explaining myself; she was only associated with my illness.  But at last she made me understand that she was not ignorant of a great deal that troubled me.

“Who has told you?” I said, my heart hardening itself against Richard, who could have spoken of my trouble to a stranger.

“You, yourself,” she answered me.

“I have raved?” I said.

“Yes.”

“And who has heard me?”

“No one else.  I sent every one else from the room whenever your delirium became intelligible.”

This made me grateful toward her; and I longed for sympathy.  I threw my arms about her and wept bitterly.

“Then you know that I can never cry enough,” I said.

“I do not know that,” she answered.  After a vain attempt to soothe me with general words of comfort, she said, with much wisdom, “Tell me exactly what thought gives you the most pain, now, at this moment.”

“The thought of his dreadful act, and that by it he has lost his soul.”

“We know with Whom all things are possible,” she said, “and we do not know what cloud may have been over his reason at that moment.  Would it comfort you to pray for him?”

“Ought I?” I asked, raising my head.

“I do not know any reason that you ought not,” she returned.  “Shall I say some prayers for him now?”

I grasped her hand:  she took a little book from her pocket, and knelt down beside me, holding my hand in hers.  Oh, the mercy, the relief of those prayers!  They may not have done him any good, but they did me.  The hopeless grief that was killing me, I “wept it from my heart” that hour.