Don Aloysius turned to look at her, but said nothing. She laughed.

"Dear Father Aloysius, what a wise priest you are! Not a word falls
from those beautifully set lips of yours! If you were a fool--(so many
men are!) you would have repeated my phrase, 'the inside of a sun-ray,'
with an accent of scornful incredulity, and you would have stared at me
with all a fool's contempt! But you are not a fool,--you know or you
perceive instinctively exactly what I mean. The inside of a
sun-ray!--it was disclosed to me suddenly--a veritable miracle! I have
seen it many times since, but not with all the wonder and ecstasy of
the first revelation. I was so young, too! I told a renowned professor
at one of the American colleges just what I saw, and he was so amazed
and confounded at my description of rays that had taken the best
scientists years to discover, that he begged to be allowed to examine
my eyes! He thought there must be something unusual about them. In fact
there IS!--and after his examination he seemed more puzzled than ever.
He said something about 'an exceptionally strong power of vision,' but
frankly admitted that power of vision alone would not account for it.
Anyhow I plainly saw all the rays within one ray--there were seven. The
ray itself was--or so I fancied--the octave of colour. I was little
more than a child when this 'interval' of happiness--PERFECT
happiness!--was granted to me--I felt as if a window had been opened
for me to look through it into heaven!"

"Do you believe in heaven?" asked Aloysius, suddenly.

She hesitated.

"I used to,--in those days. As I have just said I was only a child, and
heaven was a real place to me,--even the angels were real presences--"

"And you have lost them now?"

She gave a little gesture of resignation.

"They left me"--she answered--"I did not lose them. They simply went."

He was silent. His fine, calm features expressed a certain grave
patience, but nothing more.

She resumed--

"That was my first experience of real 'happiness.' Till then I had
lived the usual monotonous life of childhood, doing what I was told,
and going whither I was taken, but the disclosure of the sun-ray was a
key to individuality, and seemed to unlock my prison doors. I began to
think for myself, and to find my own character as a creature apart from
others. My second experience was years after,--just when I left school
and when my father took me to see the place where I was born, in the