And now it was changed. The relief had come just before sundown. She had been lying on her bed, her arms outstretched in the form of a cross, as she had taught herself to do, and suddenly, like some perfume from a garden of spice, peace had entered. She had walked to the window, and there she had seen the sun, and it had seemed to her as though it were a hole pierced in the high wall of heaven to let out the blinding light of the glory within. She was gazing upon it now, though her eyes saw nothing, till her withered body, battered with the mortifications of forty years, felt light as summer air, frail as an egg-shell, translucent as pearl. No longer, as in her darkest moments, did she feel an old broken woman of sixty, a failure and a fool, a mystic who could not contemplate, one who pray
