w and then would come a greater gust, and rattle the window as
if in fierce anger at its exclusion, then go shrieking and wailing
through the dark heaven. Mechanically she took her New Testament, and,
seating herself in a low chair by the fire, tried to read; but she
could not fix her thoughts, or get the meaning of a sentence: when she
had read it, there it lay, looking at her just the same, like an
unanswered riddle.

The region of the senses is the unbelieving part of the human soul; and
out of that now began to rise fumes of doubt and question into Mary's
heart and brain. Death was a fact. The loss, the evanishment, the
ceasing, were incontrovertible--the only incontrovertible things: she
was sure of them: could she be sure of anything else? How could she?
She had not seen Christ rise; she had never looked upon one of the
dead; never heard a voice from the other bank; had received no certain
testimony. These were not her thoughts; she was too weary to think;
they were but the thoughts that steamed up in her, and went floating
about before her; she looked on them calmly, coldly, as they came, and
passed, or remained--saw them with indifference--there they were, and
she could not help it--weariedly, believing none of them, unable to
cope with and dispel them, hardly affected by their presence, save with
a sense of dreariness and loneliness and wretched company. At last she
fell asleep, and in a moment was dreaming diligently. This was her
dream, as nearly as she could recall it, when she came to herself after
waking from it with a cry.

She was one of a large company at a house where she had never been
before--a beautiful house with a large garden behind. It was a summer
night, and the guests were wandering in and out at will, and through
house and garden, amid lovely things of all colors and odors. The moon
was shining, and the roses were in pale bloom. But she knew nobody, and
wandered alone in the garden, oppressed with something she did not
understand. Every now and then she came on a little group, or met a
party of the guests, as she walked, but none spoke to her, or seemed to
see her, and she spoke to none.

She found herself at length in an avenue of dark trees, the end of
which was far off. Thither she went walking, the only living thing,
crossing strange shadows from the moon. At the end of it she was in a
place of tombs. Terror and a dismay indescribable seized her; she
turned and fled back to the company