“The priest, the priest!” moaned the old woman at last.

“Oh! no, no, no—­not the priest; he can do nothing.  He knows it’s all lies, too!”

“The priest! the priest!” moaned the other again.  “He can tell you; he knows the answer.”

Her face was convulsed with effort, and her old fingers fumbled and twisted with the rosary.  Mabel grew suddenly frightened, and stood up.

“Oh! mother!” She stooped and kissed her.  “There!  I won’t say any more now.  But just think about it quietly.  Don’t be in the least afraid; it is all perfectly right.”

She stood a moment, still looking compassionately down; torn by sympathy and desire.  No! it was no use now; she must wait till the next day.

“I’ll look in again presently,” she said, “when you have had dinner.  Mother! don’t look like that!  Kiss me!”

It was astonishing, she told herself that evening, how any one could be so blind.  And what a confession of weakness, too, to call only for the priest!  It was ludicrous, absurd!  She herself was filled with an extraordinary peace.  Even death itself seemed now no longer terrible, for was not death swallowed up in victory?  She contrasted the selfish individualism of the Christian, who sobbed and shrank from death, or, at the best, thought of it only as the gate to his own eternal life, with the free altruism of the New Believer who asked no more than that Man should live and grow, that the Spirit of the World should triumph and reveal Himself, while he, the unit, was content to sink back into that reservoir of energy from which he drew his life.  At this moment she would have suffered anything, faced death cheerfully—­she contemplated even the old woman upstairs with pity—­for was it not piteous that death should not bring her to herself and reality?

She was in a quiet whirl of intoxication; it was as if the heavy veil of sense had rolled back at last and shown a sweet, eternal landscape behind—­a shadowless land of peace where the lion lay down with the lamb, and the leopard with the kid.  There should be war no more:  that bloody spectre was dead, and with him the brood of evil that lived in his shadow—­superstition, conflict, terror, and unreality.  The idols were smashed, and rats had run out; Jehovah was fallen; the wild-eyed dreamer of Galilee was in his grave; the reign of priests was ended.  And in their place stood a strange, quiet figure of indomitable power and unruffled tenderness....  He whom she had seen—­the Son of Man, the Saviour of the world, as she had called Him just now—­He who bore these titles was no longer a monstrous figure, half God and half man, claiming both natures and possessing neither; one who was tempted without temptation, and who conquered without merit, as his followers said.  Here was one instead whom she could follow, a god indeed and a man as well—­a god because human, and a man because so divine.