It is said that gardeners, sometimes, when they would bring a rose to richer flowering, deprive it, for a season, of light and moisture.  Silent and dark it stands, dropping one fading leaf after another, and seeming to go down patiently to death.  But when every leaf is dropped, and the plant stands stripped to the uttermost, a new life is even then working in the buds, from which shall spring a tender foliage and a brighter wealth of flowers.  So, often in celestial gardening, every leaf of earthly joy must drop, before a new and divine bloom visits the soul.

Gradually, as months passed away, the floods grew still; the mighty rushes of the inner tides ceased to dash.  There came first a delicious calmness, and then a celestial inner clearness, in which the soul seemed to lie quiet as an untroubled ocean, reflecting heaven.  Then came the fulness of mysterious communion given to the pure in heart,—­that advent of the Comforter in the soul, teaching all things and bringing all things to remembrance; and Mary moved in a world transfigured by a celestial radiance.  Her face, so long mournfully calm, like some chiselled statue of Patience, now wore a radiance, as when one places a light behind some alabaster screen sculptured with mysterious and holy emblems, and words of strange sweetness broke from her, as if one should hear snatches of music from a door suddenly opened in heaven.  Something wise and strong and sacred gave an involuntary impression of awe in her looks and words;—­it was not the childlike loveliness of early days, looking with dovelike, ignorant eyes on sin and sorrow; but the victorious sweetness of that great multitude who have come out of great tribulation, having washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.  In her eyes there was that nameless depth that one sees with awe in the Sistine Madonna,—­eyes that have measured infinite sorrow and looked through it to an infinite peace.

“My dear Madam,” said the Doctor to Mrs. Scudder, “I cannot but think that there must be some uncommonly gracious exercises passing in the mind of your daughter; for I observe, that, though she is not inclined to conversation, she seems to be much in prayer; and I have, of late, felt the sense of a Divine Presence with her in a most unusual degree.  Has she opened her mind to you?”

“Mary was always a silent girl,” said Mrs. Scudder, “and not given to speaking of her own feelings; indeed, until she gave you an account of her spiritual state, on joining the church, I never knew what her exercises were.  Hers is a most singular case.  I never knew the time when she did not seem to love God more than anything else.  It has disturbed me sometimes,—­because I did not know but it might be mere natural sensibility, instead of gracious affection.”