refused to take. There
were sanctities and charities, unspeakable tendernesses, holy and
half-spiritual things in him, that she had shut her eyes to. She had
shut her eyes that she might justify herself.

Her fault was there, in that perpetual justification and salvation of
herself; in her indestructible, implacable spiritual pride.

And she had shut her ears as she had shut her eyes. She had not listened
to her sister's voice, nor to her husband's voice, nor to her little
child's voice, nor to the voice of God in her own heart. Then, that she
might be humbled, she had had to take God's message from the persons
whom she had most detested and despised.

She had not loved well. And she saw now that men and women only counted
by their power of loving. She had despised and detested poor little Mrs.
Hannay; yet it might be that Mrs. Hannay was nearer to God than she had
been, by her share of that one godlike thing.

She, through her horror of one sin, had come to look upon flesh and
blood, on the dear human heart, and the sacred, mysterious human body, as
things repellent to her spirituality, fine only in their sacrifice to the
hungry, solitary flame. She had known nothing of their larger and diviner
uses, their secret and profound subservience to the flame. She had come
near to knowing through her motherhood, and yet she had not known.

And as she looked with anguish on the helpless body, shamed, and
humiliated, and destroyed by her, she realised that now she knew.

Edith's words came back to her, "Love is a provision for the soul's
redemption of the body. Or, may be, for the body's redemption of the
soul." She understood them now. She saw that Edith had spoken to her of
the miracle of miracles. She saw that the path of all spirits going
upward is by acceptance of that miracle. She, who had sinned the
spiritual sin, could find salvation only by that way.

It was there that she had been led, all the while, if she had but known
it. But she had turned aside, and had been sent back, over and over
again, to find the way. Now she had found it; and there could be no more
turning back.

She saw it all. She saw a purity greater than her own, a strong and
tender virtue, walking in the ways of earth and cleansing them. She saw
love as a divine spirit, going down into the courses of the blood and
into the chambers of the heart, moving mortal things to immortality.
She saw that there is no spirituality worthy of the name that ha