Chapter 12 Summary

The narrator asks his guide if there is another river because of the strange reflected lights he notices, but then he realizes that the lights are coming from the Bright People who make up the approaching procession. Some of them are scattering flowers and most of them are singing. The song is so beautiful that he thinks if he could write down the music, those who hear it would never grow sick or old.

Soon the narrator sees the woman whose honor they are all praising. She is unbearably beautiful, and the narrator wonders who she is. MacDonald says she is someone he would never have heard of on earth, one Sarah Smith. She is one of the great ones. Those who praise her are those she helped on earth; she was very kind to everyone she knew. A great number of animals...