might have drawn him with her into the secret shelter of the Unseen.  She perceived that in those years her spiritual life had suffered by the invasion of her earthly trouble.  She had approached the silent shelter with cries of supplication for herself and for her child, the sweet mortal thing she had loved above all mortal things.  Every year had made it harder for her to reach the sources of her help, hardest of all to achieve the initiatory state, the nakedness, the prostration, the stillness of the dedicated soul.  Too many miseries cried and strove in her.  She could no longer shut to her door, and bar the passage to the procession of her thoughts, no longer cleanse and empty her spirit’s house for the divine thing she desired to dwell with her.

And now she was restored to her peace; lifted up and swept, effortless, into the place of heavenly help.  Anne’s soul had no longer to reach out her hand and feel her way to God, for it was God who sought for her and found her.  She heard behind her, as it were, the footsteps of the divine pursuing power.  Once more, as in the mystic days before her marriage, she had only to close her eyes, and the communion was complete.  At night, when her prayer was ended, she lay motionless in the darkness, till she seemed to pass into the ultimate bliss, beyond the reach of prayer.  There were moments when she felt herself to be close upon the very vision of God, the beatitude of the pure.

After these moments Anne found herself contemplating her own inviolate sanctity.

There was in Anne an immense sincerity, underlying a perfect tangle of minute deceptions and hypocrisies.  She was not deceived as to the supreme event.  She was truly experiencing the great spiritual passion which, alone of passions, is destined to an immortal satisfaction.  She had all but touched the end of the saint’s progress.  But she was ignorant, both of the paths that brought her there, and the paths that had led and might again lead, her feet astray.

Each night, when she closed her bedroom door, she felt that she was entering into a sanctuary.  She was profoundly, tenderly grateful to her husband for the renunciation that made that refuge possible to her.  She accepted her blessed isolation as his gift.

This Thursday had been a day of little lacerating distractions.  She had gone through it thirsting for the rest and surrender, the healing silence of the night.

She undressed slowly, being by nature thorough and deliberate in all her movements.

She was standing before her looking-glass, about to unpin her hair, when she heard a low knock at her door.  Majendie had been detained, and was late in coming to take his last look at Peggy before going to bed.

Anne opened the door softly, and signed to him to make no noise.  He stole on tiptoe to the child’s cot, and stood there for a moment.  Then he came and sat down in the chair by the dressing-table, where Anne was standing with her arms raised, unpinning her hair.  Majendie had always admired that attitude in Anne.  It was simple, calm, classic, and superbly feminine.  Her long white wrapper clothed her more perfectly than any dress.