agined. She could see everything upon its surface, even to the
tiniest flower; but nothing was as it had seemed to her when she had
been one of its inhabitants herself. Each blade of grass, each tree
and rock and brook, was something more than a mere blade or tree or
rock or brook,--something so much more strange and beautiful that it
almost made her tremble with ecstasy to see.

"Now you can see," said the voice; "before you were blind. Now you
understand what I meant when I said the objects one sees are of
themselves nothing; it is what they represent that is grand and
glorious and beautiful. A flower is lovely, but it is not half so
lovely as the thing it suggests--but I can't expect you to understand
_that_. Even when you were blind you used to love the ocean. Now that
you can see, do you know why? It is because it is an emblem of God's
love, deep and mighty and strong and beautiful beyond words. And so
with the mountains, and so with the smallest weed that grows. But we
must look at other things before you go back--"

"Oh, dear!" faltered Marjorie, "when I go back shall I be blind again?
How does one see clear when one goes back?"

"Through truth," answered the beam, briefly.

But just then Marjorie found herself looking at some new sights. "What
are these?" she whispered tremblingly.

"The _proofs_ of some pictures you will remember to have half seen,"
replied the beam.

And sure enough! with a start of amaze and wonder she saw before her
eyes the people who had sat in the crowded gallery with her before she
had left it to journey here with her sunbeam guide; but, oh! with such
a difference.

The baby she had thought so ugly was in reality a white-winged angel,
mild-eyed and pitying; while the hump-backed boy represented a patience
so tender that it beautified everything upon which it shone. She
thought she recognized in one of the pictures a frock of filmy lace
that she remembered to have seen before; but the form it encased was
strange to her, so ill-shapen and unlovely it looked; while the face
was so repulsive that she shrank from it with horror.

"Is that what I thought was the pretty girl?" she murmured tremulously.

"Yes," replied the beam, simply.

The next portrait was that of the silver-haired old lady whom Marjorie
had thought so crooked and bowed. She saw now why her shoulders were
bent. It was because of the mass of memories she carried,--memories
gathered through a long and u