Sophia Rexford had set herself, like many a saint of olden and modern times, to crush within her all selfishness; and the result had been the result of all such effort when it is staunch and honest—­to show that that against which she was warring was no mere mood or bad habit, to be overcome by directing the life on a nobler plan, but a living thing, with a vitality so strong that it seemed as if God Himself must have given it life.  She stood now baffled, as she had often been before, by her invincible enemy.  Where was the selfless temper of mind that was her ideal?  Certainly not within her.  She was too candid to suppose for a moment that the impatient scorn she felt for those with whom she had been talking approached in any way to that humility and love that are required of the Christian.  She felt overwhelmed by surging waves of evil within.  It was at the source the fountain ought to be sweet, and there ambition and desire for pleasure rose still triumphant; and the current of her will, set against them, seemed only to produce, not their abatement, but a whirlpool of discontent, which sucked into itself all natural pleasures, and cast out around its edge those dislikes and disdains which were becoming habitual in her intercourse with others.  It was all wrong—­she knew it.  She leaned her head against the cold pane, and her eyes grew wet with tears.

There is no sorrow on earth so real as this; no other for which such bitter tears have been shed; no other which has so moved the heart of God with sympathy.  Yet there came to Sophia just then a strange thought that her tears were unnecessary, that the salvation of the world was something better than this conflict, that the angels were looking upon her discouragement in pained surprise.

She had no understanding with which to take in this thought.  As she looked at it, with her soul’s eye dim, it passed away; and she, trying in vain to recall the light that it seemed to hold, wondered if it would come again.

Perhaps the tears had given relief to her brain; perhaps some Divine Presence had come near her, giving hope that she could not weigh or measure or call by name; at any rate, as she looked round again with fresh glance, the scene outside seemed fairer than it had yet appeared to her.

A long strip had been swept on the ice of the river by pleasure-loving hands.  Down this burnished path young men and maidens were skating, and their way was paved with gold.  There was soft tinting of this same light on the undulations of the pearly land beyond; blue shadows were in its woods, and reflected fire on many a window of the houses that clustered near and far.  She knew that in each house that was a true Canadian home there was joyous preparations going on for the next day’s fete.  She wondered what it would be like to be at home in this country, to be one in its sports and festivities.  She could not see from her attic window the land on this side of the river, but she heard the shouts of some boys who were spending their holiday at the college.  They were at some game or other in a field near.  Sophia liked to hear them.