s. These were no idle words.
The promise was something derived from her own experience.

On her pilgrimage to Rome she had gazed from an Alpine peak and beheld
at her feet nothing save low hills, forests, valleys, and flashing
streams, with here and there a village; but she could distinguish
neither human beings nor animals; a light mist had veiled everything,
converting it into one monotonous surface. But above her head the sky,
like a giant dome free from cloud and mist, arched in a beautiful
vault, blue as turquoise and sapphire. It seemed so close that the eagle
soaring near her might reach it with a few strokes of his pinions.
She was steeped in radiance, and the sun shone down upon her with
overpowering brilliancy like the eye of God.

Close at her side a gay butterfly hovered about the solitary little
white flower which grew from a bare rock on the topmost summit. In the
brilliant light and amidst the solemn silence that butterfly seemed like
a transfigured soul, and aroused the question, Who that was permitted
to live on this glowing height, so near the Most High, could desire to
return to the grey mist below?

So the human soul which soared to the shining height where it was so
near heaven, would blissfully enjoy the purity of the air and the un
shadowed light which bathed it, and all that was passing in the world
below would blend into a single vanquished whole, whose details could no
longer be distinguished. Thus Heinz Schorlin's image would also mingle
with the remainder of the world, lying far below her, to which he
belonged. It should merely incite her to rise nearer and nearer to
heaven, to the radiant light above, to which her soul would mount as
easily as the eagle that before the pilgrim's eyes had vanished in the
divine blue and the golden sunshine.

"So come and dare the flight!" she concluded with warm enthusiasm. "The
wings you need have grown from your soul, you chosen bride of Heaven.
Use them. That which now most repels you from the goal will fall away
as the snake sheds its skin. Like the phoenix rising from its ashes, the
destruction of the little earthly love which even now causes you more
pain than pleasure, will permit the ascent of the great love for Him Who
is Love incarnate, the love which encompasses the lonely butterfly on
the white blossom in the silent, deserted mountain solitude, which lacks
no feather on its wings, no tiniest hair on its feelers, as warmly and
carefully as the