ld makes darkness His secret place; and so you see that
if you were able to feel that any human soul really understood, it would
mean that the darkness was over. I have suffered that Night twice myself;
the third time I think, will be in the valley of death."

Isabel only half understood her; but it was something to know that others
had tasted the cup too; and that what was so bitter was not necessarily
poisonous.

At another time as the two were walking together under the pines one
evening, and the girl had again tried to show to the nun the burning
desolation of her soul, Mistress Margaret had suddenly turned.

"Listen, dear child," she said, "I will tell you a secret. Over there,"
and she pointed out to where the sunset glowed behind the tree trunks and
the slope beyond, "over there, in West Grinsted, rests our dear Lord in
the blessed sacrament. His Body lies lonely, neglected and forgotten by
all but half a dozen souls; while twenty years ago all England reverenced
It. Behold and see if there be any sorrow--" and then the nun stopped, as
she saw Isabel's amazed eyes staring at her.

But it haunted the girl and comforted her now and then. Yet in the
fierceness of her pain she asked herself again and again, was it
true--was it true? Was she sacrificing her life for a dream, a
fairy-story? or was it true that there the body, that had hung on the
cross fifteen hundred years ago, now rested alone, hidden in a silver
pyx, within locked doors for fear of the Jews.--Oh! dear Lord, was it
true?

Hubert had kept his word, and left the place almost immediately after his
last interview; and was to return at Easter for his final answer.
Christmas had come and gone; and it seemed to her as if even the
tenderest mysteries of the Christian Religion had no touch with her now.
She walked once more in the realm of grace, as in the realm of nature, an
exile from its spirit. All her sensitive powers seemed so absorbed in
interior pain that there was nothing in her to respond to or appreciate
the most keen external impressions. As she awoke and looked up on
Christmas morning early, and saw the frosted panes and the snow lying
like wool on the cross-bars, and heard the Christmas bells peal out in
the listening air; as she came downstairs and the old pleasant acrid
smell of the evergreens met her, and she saw the red berries over each
picture, and the red heart of the wood-fire; nay, as she knelt at the
chancel rails, and tried in he