“When the soul of man sees God, it shines!” said Richard.

They reached at length the spot where first they met in the moonlight. With one heart they stopped and turned, and looked in each other’s moonlit eyes.

“Do you know that lovely passage in the book of Baruch?” asked Richard.

“What book is that?” returned Barbara. “It surely can’t be in the Bible?”

“It is in the Apocrypha—which is to me very much in the Bible—written by the prophet Jeremiah’s friend and amanuensis. I think I can repeat it as it stands in the English Bible. It was the moon that made me think of it. ‘The stars shined in their watches, and rejoiced: when he calleth them, they say, Here we be. And so with cheerfulness they showed light unto him that made them. This is our God, and there shall none other be accounted of in comparison to him.’”

“That is beautiful!” cried Barbara. “And so with cheerfulness they showed light unto him that made them!”

A silence followed. Then again Barbara spoke, and she clung a little closer to her husband.

“I want to tell you something that came to me one night when we were in London,” she said. “It was a miserable time—before I found you up in the orchestra seats there! Then hell became purgatory for me, for there was hope in it. London is a terrible city, full of misery. I was very sad, and saw nothing around me but a waste of dreariness. I kept asking God to give me patience. But the days were dismal, and the balls and dinners so frightful. I seemed to be in a world without air. The girls were so silly, the men so inane, and the conversation so mawkish and colourless! Their compliments sickened me.

“One morning, after what seemed like a long night’s dreamless sleep, I awoke. But it was much too early to get up. So I lay thinking—or more truly, I hope, being thought into, as Mr. Wingfold says. Many of the most beautiful things I had read, scenes of our Lord’s life on earth, and thoughts of the Father, came and went. I had no desire to sleep again, or any feeling of drowsiness, but in the midst of fully conscious thought, I found myself in some other place. I knew only that there was firm ground under my feet and a soft white radiance of light about me. Afterward I remembered branches of trees spreading high overhead, through which I saw the sky. But at the time I seemed not to take notice of what was around me. I was leaning against a form tall and grand, clothed from the shoulders to the ground in a white robe, full, and soft, and fine. It lay in thickly gathered folds, touched to whiteness in the radiant light, and the arms encircled without at first touching me.

“With sweet contentment my eyes went in and out of those radiant lines, feeling, though they were parts of his dress, that they were yet of himself. For I knew the form to be that of the heavenly Father, but I felt no trembling fear, no sense of painful awe—only a deep, deep worshipping, an unutterable love and confidence. ‘O Father!’ I said, not aloud, but low into the folds of his garment. Scarcely had I breathed the words when ‘My child!’ came whispered back, and I knew his head was bent toward me, and I felt his arms close round my shoulders. The folds of his garment wrapped around me and, with a soft sweep, fell behind me to the ground. Delight held me still for a while, and then I looked up to see his face, but I could not see past his chest. His shoulders rose far above my upreaching hands, for my head did not come much above his waist.