t was awed
with thinking thereupon. A bloody mist seemed to fall upon the environs
of Meaux; through that red horror she could not penetrate; it shrouded
and it held poor Jacqueline.

Of the faith that would sustain him she began once more to inquire. It
is not by a bound that mortals ever clear the heights of God. Step by
step they scale the eminences, toiling through the heavenly atmosphere.
Only around the summit shines the eternal sun.

So she must now recall the words that Victor Le Roy read for her last
night; and the words he spoke from out his heart,--these also. And
she did not fear now, as yesterday, to ask for light. Let the light
dawn,--oh, let it shine on her!

The mother of Leclerc had uttered mysterious words which Jacqueline took
for truth; the light was joyful and blessed, and of all things to be
desired, though it smote the life from one like lightning. She waited
alone with faith, watching till it should come,--left alone with this
beam glimmering like a moth through darkness!--for thus was a believer,
or one who resolved on believing, left in that day, when he turned from
the machinery of the Church, and stood alone, searching for God without
the aid of priestly intervention.

VI.

There was something awful in such loneliness.

Jacqueline knew little of it until now, as she walked toward the fields,
by the side of Elsie Meril.

She saw how she had depended on the priest of Domremy, as he had been
the lawgiver and the leader of her life. A spiritual life, to be
sustained only by the invisible spirit, to be lived by faith, not in
man, but in God, without intervention of saint or angel or Blessed
Virgin,--was the world's life liberated by such freedom?

By faith, and not by sight, the just must live. Would He bow his heavens
and come down to dwell with the contrite and the humble?

Wondrous strange it seemed,--incomprehensible,--more than she could
manage or control. There are prisoners whose pardon proves the world too
large for them: they find no rest until their prison-door is opened for
them again.

Of this class was Elsie,--not Jacqueline. Elsie was afraid of
freedom,--not equal to it,--unable to deal with it; satisfied with being
a child, with being a slave, when it came to be a question whether she
should accept and use her highest privilege and dignity. At this hour,
and among all persuasions, you will find that Elsie does not stand
alone. Little children there are, long as the