h is filled with light, grows buoyant, and, while her
hand is still clasped by the Divine Guide, she is wafted upwards.

Stretched out below, the hills and vales of the earth are one vast
garden. All is indistinct at first; expanses of misty colour and tint;
but by degrees the scene resolves itself into more definite form. The
whole is intersected and watered with streams, more or less clear and
pure, which arise and are replenished from a bright vapour, the Spirit
of Life, which shines, issuing forth from an empty tomb in a rock in the
East. There are banks of wild violets and primroses, and woods filled
with anemones and hyacinths--myriads of beautiful flowers, reaching over
all the world.

Hazel has hardly taken in anything of the wonder of the scene, when her
attention is attracted by an arch of white mist above the earth, and, as
it seems, but a few paces from her. Gradually this path of mist grows
clear as crystal, and the colours glancing in it take shape, and form a
clear, transparent picture.

A cornfield on a summer evening, filled with blossoms of poppies and
corn-flowers. A wild storm sweeps over the field; the corn is broken
down; the flowers are crushed beneath its weight, draggled and withered.
A poppy, torn up by its roots, is whirled through the air.

A mist sweeps over the crystalline cloud, and where it grows clear again
the scene is changed to a wild hill-side. Scarlet and blue flowers
intermingle in the distance; in the foreground lies a single poppy,
withered and dying. Slowly, beside it a lily grows up; as it grows the
fading poppy is stirred, touched by its leaves; and the tiny bells
waving over it inspire new life and vigour, till at length, grown whole
and fresh, it is loosened from the brown uptorn roots, and floats
upwards, to bloom more beautiful in Paradise.

Again the mist passes over the light picture and changes it. A woodland
scene is painted there now. Amid the fern and moss and twigs under the
trees, wild flowers are blowing. A pathway intersects the little wood,
and across it shadows of the trees fall, with sunlight between. In the
foremost patch of sunshine, at the edge of the path, is a sprinkling of
anemone leaves. And there amongst them a delicate blossom, half crushed
by the superincumbent weight of moss, the fallen leaves of last year,
and tiny, lichen-covered twigs. The white, transparent petals are soiled
and deformed, thrust down to the earth. As Hazel looks, regretting