d thank
God for having pierced through the fortress in which you were
imprisoned. You must just go straight to Him, and open your heart, as
if you were opening a window to the sun and air.' She did not explain,
or try to give me formulas or phrases, she simply showed me the light
breaking round me.

"It came to me quite suddenly one morning in my room upstairs. I was
very miserable indeed, missing my dear husband at every turn, quite
unable to face life, shuddering and shrinking through the days. I threw
it all aside, and spoke to God Himself. I said, 'You made me, You put
me here, You sent me love, You sent me prosperity. I have cared for the
wrong things, I have loved in the wrong way. Now I throw everything
else aside, and claim strength and light. I will sorrow no more and
desire no more; I will take every day just what You send me, I will say
and do what You bid me. I will make no pretences and no complaints. Do
with me what You will.'

"I cannot tell you what happened to me, but a great tide of strength
and even joy flowed into my whole being; it was the water of life,
clear as crystal; and yet it was myself all the time! I was not
different, but I was one with something pure and wise and loving and
eternal.

"That has never left me. You will ask why I have not done more,
bestirred myself more; because that is just what one cannot do. All
that matters nothing. The activities which one makes for oneself, they
are the delusions which hide God from us. One must not strive or rebuke
or arrange; one must simply love and be. Let me tell you one thing. I
was haunted all my early life with a fear of death. I liked life so
well, every moment of it, every incident, that I could not bear to
think it should ever cease; now, though I shrink from pain as much as
ever, I have no shrinking whatever from death. It is the perfectly
natural and simple change, and one is with God there as here. The soul
and God--those are the two imperishable things; one has not either to
know or to act--one has only to feel."

She ceased speaking, and sat for a moment upright in her chair. Then
she went on. "Now the moment I saw you, my dear boy, I loved
you--indeed I have always loved you, I think, and I have always felt
that some day in His good time God would bring us together. But I see
too that you have not found the strength of God. You are not at peace.
Your life is full and active and kind; you are faithful and pure; but
your self is s