"I know now," she breathed.
"What do you know?" My voice was tense with excitement.
"What was your vision?" she rejoined.
"Have I not told you? There appeared to me one who called me back to the
world; who assured me that there I should best serve God; who filled me
with the conviction that she needed me. She addressed me by name, and
spoke of a place of which I had never heard until that hour, but which
to-day I know."
"And you? And you?" she asked. "What answer did you make?"
"I called her by name, although until that hour I did not know it."
She bowed her head. Emotion set her all a-tremble.
"It is what I have so often wondered," she confessed, scarce above a
whisper. "And it is true--as true as it is strange!"
"True?" I echoed. "It was the only true miracle in that place of false
ones, and it was so clear a call of destiny that it decided me to return to
the world which I had abandoned. And yet I have since wondered why. Here
there seems to be no place for me any more than there was yonder. I am
devout again with a worldly devotion now, yet with a devotion that must be
Heaven-inspired, so pure and sweet it is. It has shut out from me all the
foulness of that past; and yet I am unworthy. And that is why I cry to you
to set me some penance ere I can make my prayer.
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