She would go back to them, back to her true home, where loving faces waited to welcome her, where hearts were open and life was simple and the weary brain could find rest from the stress and struggle of obstinate questionings of destiny.  Life was so simple at bottom; it was she that was so perversely complex.  She would go back to her father whose naive devout face swam glorified upon a sea of tears; yea, and back to her father’s primitive faith like a tired lost child that spies its home at last.  The quaint, monotonous cadence of her father’s prayers rang pathetically in her ears; and a great light, the light that Raphael had shown her, seemed to blend mystically with the once meaningless sounds.  Yea, all things were from Him who created light and darkness, good and evil; she felt her cares falling from her, her soul absorbing itself in the sense of a Divine Love, awful, profound, immeasurable, underlying and transcending all things, incomprehensibly satisfying the soul and justifying and explaining the universe.  The infinite fret and fume of life seemed like the petulance of an infant in the presence of this restful tenderness diffused through the great spaces.  How holy the stars seemed up there in the quiet sky, like so many Sabbath lights shedding visible consecration and blessing!

Yes, she would go back to her loved ones, back from this dainty room, with its white laces and perfumed draperies, back if need be to a Ghetto garret.  And in the ecstasy of her abandonment of all worldly things, a great peace fell upon her soul.

In the morning the nostalgia of the Ghetto was still upon her, blent with a passion of martyrdom that made her yearn for a lower social depth than was really necessary.  But the more human aspects of the situation were paramount in the gray chillness of a bleak May dawn.  Her resolution to cross the Atlantic forthwith seemed a little hasty, and though she did not flinch from it, she was not sorry to remember that she had not money enough for the journey.  She must perforce stay in London till she had earned it; meantime she would go back to the districts and the people she knew so well, and accustom herself again to the old ways, the old simplicities of existence.

She dressed herself in her plainest apparel, though she could not help her spring bonnet being pretty.  She hesitated between a hat and a bonnet, but decided that her solitary position demanded as womanly an appearance as possible.  Do what she would, she could not prevent herself looking exquisitely refined, and the excitement of adventure had lent that touch of color to her face which made it fascinating.  About seven o’clock she left her room noiselessly and descended the stairs cautiously, holding her little black bag in her hand.

“Och, be the holy mother, Miss Esther, phwat a turn you gave me,” said Mary O’Reilly, emerging unexpectedly from the dining-room and meeting her at the foot of the stairs.  “Phwat’s the matther?”