"She found something," thought Sophia; "I wonder what it was? Peace, of course, but what got her to it? For outwardly her life was as bare as mine--and she had never known even what I know of--things. And yet, they say that in religion there is every experience. . . . I wonder if the babies she might have borne if she'd married some fellow-peasant ever beat at her reproachfully? And if so, what it was she found? She lived here, I suppose, walked in the garden and sat in my place in the wall--I wonder what she felt here. . . ." All was very quiet and still on the wall, and for the first time since Richard's letter had come Sophia's aching was a little soothed, the taut fibres of her relaxed and her mind slid into receptivity. Then a more positive change began to make itself felt to her, though she could not have traced its birth or growth if she had tried. The first note of difference was a physical one. Sophia was short-sighted and saw the world in a blur; now her sight began to take precision of outline and then the things at which she was looking changed too. The towers were more numerous, and from some of them flags fluttered out, and not till long after did Sophia remember that there had been no breeze that evening. Looking for the house over the tree-tops of the garden she saw that it had shrunk oddly, and an outer stairway crawled up its wall. On the sundial lay a rosary of dark beads--Sophia could see its steel cross glitter in the evening light. These were outward changes, on their heels came the inward change that made them seem natural to her. It was as though she were in one of those dreams when the dreamer knows who he is and that he will soon wake up, and yet does and says the most incongruous things; with this difference--Sophia had a curious feeling that it was some one else's dream which had taken hold of her. She struggled against it at first as against an anæsthetic, but the thing crept over her like a tide. A child's cry came from the town, and Sophia felt a sudden contraction at the heart, and with a thrill realized that this new Person in her felt it also--that they were at one. With that shock of mutual sensation the fusion became more nearly complete; of Sophia's own consciousness was left only enough to know that she was still herself, hearing, seeing, and feeling what some one else had heard and seen and felt before her in that place. She knew, too, that the drama played in her soul ever since she came to Sant' Ambrogio, a wordless drama in which no human being had taken part, was drawing to a climax, and that the human element had invaded it at last. She was about to learn what it was for which those weeks, especially that hour outside the wall, had prepared her.