n." It was their tribute to Edith's triumphant
personality that they mourned for her as for one cut off in the fulness
of a strong, beneficent life.

For those three weeks Anne remained to her husband all that she had been
on the night of Edith's burial.

And, as she felt that nobody but her husband understood what she had lost
in Edith, she realised for the first time his kindred to his sister. She
forced herself to dwell on his many admirable qualities. He was
unselfish, chivalrous, the soul of honour. On his chivalry, which touched
her more nearly than his other virtues, she was disposed to put a very
high interpretation. She felt that, in his way, he acknowledged her
spiritual perfection, also, and reverenced it. If their relations only
continued as they were, she believed that she would yet be happy with
him. To think of him as she had once been obliged to think was to profane
the sorrow that sanctified him now. She was persuaded that the shock of
Edith's death had changed him, that he was ennobled by his grief. She
could not yet see that the change was in herself. She said to herself
that her prayers for him were answered.

For it was no longer an effort, painful and perfunctory, to pray for her
husband. Since Edith's death she had prayed for him, as she had prayed in
the time of reconciliation that followed her first discovery of his sin.
She was horrified when she realised how in six years her passion of
redemption had grown cold. It was there that she had failed him, in
letting go the immaterial hold by which she 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