so fresh and cool and sweet. She was like one who
has been bathed and perfumed after the defilements of a long dusty
journey, and is able to rest in peace. As she stretched herself
between the sheets, she experienced a blessed sensation of relief,
which was a revelation to her. Until that moment, she had never quite
realised the awful oppression of her married life; the inevitable
degradation of intimate association with such a man as her husband.

The next day the ladies went out to sit on the lawn together in the
shade of the trees, with their books and work. There were no sounds
but such as, in the country, seem to accentuate the quiet, and are
aids, not to thought, but to that higher faculty which awakes in the
silence, and is to thought what the mechanical instrument is to the
voice.

"How heavenly still it is!" Beth ejaculated. "It stirs me--fills me--how
shall I express it?--makes me cognisant in some sort--conscious of
things I don't know--things beyond all this, and even better worth our
attention. The stillness here in these surroundings has the same benign
effect on me that perfect solitude has elsewhere. What a luxury it is,
though--solitude! I mean the privilege of being alone when one feels the
necessity. I am fortunate, however," she added quickly, lest she should
seem to be making a personal complaint, "in that I have a secret chamber
all to myself, and so high up that I can almost hear what the wind
whispers to the stars to make them twinkle. I go there when I want to be
alone to think my thoughts, and no one disturbs me--not even my nearest
neighbours, the angels; though if they did sometimes, I should not
complain."

"They come closer than you think, perhaps," said Lady Fulda, who had
just strolled up, with a great bunch of lilies on her arm. "Consider
the lilies," she went on, holding them out to Beth. "Look into them.
Think about them. No, though, do not think about them--feel. There is
purification in the sensation of their beauty."

"Is purification always possible?" Beth said. "Can evil ever be cast
out once it has taken root in the mind?"

"Are you speaking of thoughts or acts, I wonder?" Lady Fulda rejoined,
sitting down beside Beth and looking dreamily into her flowers. "You
know what we hold here: that no false step is irretrievable so long as
we desire what is perfectly right. It is not the things we know of,
nor even the things we have done, if the act is not habitual,--but the
thing