“Why, I’m dying now,” she thought, and was surprised to find it such an ordinary, unvolitional thing to do.  It was very good to do something unvolitional, very restful.—­Little snappings sounded in her ears, and distant crashings and thunders as of a storm perceived by a deaf man who can see and understand without hearing.

She thought very clearly of Death for a moment, and then of God.  She had often thought of Death and of God, and was surprised to find that she had been wrong about both.

“I thought—­He never gave you—­anesthetics—­” she told herself.  “Why, that’s what death is—­”

Then came the clear vision of God—­not the Great Being with devastating feet at all:  He seemed to be like the surgeon in Sydney, for a moment, very sure of His work, very strong, very much stronger and wiser than she was.  It was no use at all to fight a thing so wise and strong and tender—­

At that moment, as this most beautiful, most kindly thing came to her, she wanted to tell Kraill about it, so that he should be filled with the beauty of it without having to come to death to find it out.  The pencil was in her hand, resting on the page.  Her brain willed her fingers to conquer their heaviness, their farawayness, and write: 

“God seems like you when you told me I needn’t be frightened about Louis any more—­”

The crashings in her ears grew fainter.  More light came.

“No.  He is more than that.  He is the sun that is shining and the soft noise that is coming up from the sea—­and Andrew’s laughing—­No—­those were only His robes that I was looking at!—­God is the courage you loved—­God is the courage; His clothes are loving-kindness—­”

In that moment that the structure of her life fell inwards she saw still more.

“I know now that I need not regret all these greeds and hungers and prides of mine that have been unfulfilled.  They have been burned out by the courage and the loving-kindness—­”

The pencil rolled on to the floor; what her spirit had willed to tell him her fingers had made a weak scrawl of straggling, futile marks.