In pain itself I seemed to find the nepenthes that
others seek from pain; in suffering was my Lethean draught that brought the
only oblivion that I craved.
I think that in those months my reason wandered a little under all this
strain; and I think to-day that the long ecstasies into which I fell were
largely the result of a feverishness that burned in me as a consequence of
a chill that I had taken.
I would spend long hours upon my knees in prayer and meditation. And
remembering how others in such case as mine had known the great boon and
blessing of heavenly visions, I prayed and hoped for some such sign of
grace, confident in its power to sustain me thereafter against all possible
temptation.
And then, one night, as the year was touching its end, it seemed to me that
my prayer was answered. I do not think that my vision was a dream;
leastways, I do not think that I was asleep when it visited me. I was on
my knees at the time, beside my bed of wattles, and it was very late at
night. Suddenly the far end of my hut grew palely lucent, as if a
phosphorescent vapour were rising from the ground; it waved and rolled as
it ascended in billows of incandescence, and then out of the heart of it
there gradually grew a figure all in white over which there was a cloak of
deepest blue all flecked with golden stars, and in the folded hands a sheaf
of silver lilies.
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