From Henrietta some few letters reached her.  One of them contained the news that Marshall Wace, surmounting his religious doubts and scruples—­by precisely what process remained undeclared—­had at last taken Holy Orders.  Concerning this joyful consummation Henrietta waxed positively unctuous.  “He had gone through so much”—­the old cry!—­to which now was added conviction that his own trials fitted him to minister the more successfully to his brethren among the sorely tried.

“His preaching will, I feel certain, be quite extraordinarily original and sympathetic—­full of poetry.  And I need hardly tell you what an immense relief it is both to the General and to myself to feel he is settled in life, and that his future is provided for—­though not, alas! in the way I fondly hoped, and which—­for his happiness’ sake and my own—­I should have chosen,” she insidiously and even rather cynically wrote.

But, if in respect of the affections our maiden, during these two years, made no special progress and gained no further experimental knowledge of the perilous workings of sex, her advance in other departments was ample.

For faith now called to her with no uncertain note.  The great spiritual forces laid hold of her intelligence and imagination, drawing, moulding, enlightening her.  In the library of a somewhat grim hotel at Avila, in old Castile, she lighted upon an English translation of the life of St. Theresa—­that woman of countless practical activities, seer and sybil, mystic and wit.  The amazing biography set her within the magic circle of Christian feminine beatitude; and opened before her gaze mighty perspectives of spiritual increase, leading upward through unnumbered ranks of prophets, martyrs, saints, angelic powers, to the feet of the Virgin Mother, with the Divine Child on her arm.—­He, this last, as gateway, intermediary, between the human soul and the mystery of God Almighty, by whom, and in whom, all things visible and invisible subsist.  For the first time some dim and halting perception, some faintest hint and echo, reached Damaris of the awful majesty, the awful beauty of the fount of Universal Being; and, caught with a great trembling, she worshipped.

This culminating perception, in terms of time, amounted to no more than a single flash, the fraction of an instant’s contact.  An hour or so later, being very young and very human, the things of everyday resumed their sway.  A new dress engaged her fancy, a railway journey through—­to her—­untrodden country excited her, a picturesque street scene held her delighted interest.  Nevertheless that had taken place within her—­call it conversion, evocation, the spiritual receiving of sight, as you please—­upon which, for those who have once experienced it, there is no going back while life and reason last.  Obscured, overlaid, buried beneath the dust of the trivial and immediate, the mark of revelation upon the forehead and the heart can never be obliterated quite.  Its resurrection is not only possible but certain, if not on the near side, then surely on the farther side of death.