Before I could speak, he had departed swiftly, with the great and glad motion of those who go upon sure business in this happy place; as if he himself, at least, obeyed unseen directions, and obeyed them with his whole being. To me, so lately from a lower life, and still so choked with its errors, this loving obedience of the soul to a great central Force which I felt on every hand, but comprehended not, as yet, affected me like the discovery of a truth in science. It was as if I had found a new law of gravitation, to be mastered only by infinite attention. I fell to thinking more quietly after my father had left me alone. There came a subsidence to my tempestuous impulse, which astonished myself. I felt myself drawn and shaped, even like a wave by the tide, by something mightier far than my own wish. But there was this about the state of feeling into which I had come: that which controlled me was not only greater, it was dearer than my desire. Already a calmness conquered my storm. Already my heart awaited, without outburst or out-thrust, the expression of that other desire which should decide my fate in this most precious matter. All the old rebellion was gone, even as the protest of a woman goes on earth before the progress of a mighty love. I no longer argued and explained. I did not require or insist. Was it possible that I did not even doubt? The mysterious, celestial law of gravitation grappled me. I could no more presume to understand it than I could withstand it. I had not been what is called a submissive person. All my life, obedience had torn me in twain. Below, it had cost me all I had to give, to cultivate what believers called trust in God. I had indeed tried, in a desperate and faulty fashion, but I had often been bitterly ashamed at the best result which I could achieve, feeling that I scarcely deserved to count myself among His children, or to call myself by the Name which represented the absolute obedience of the strongest nature that human history had known. Always, under all, I had doubted whether I accepted God’s will because I wanted to, so much as because I had to. This fear had given me much pain, but being of an active temperament, far, perhaps too far, removed from mysticism, I had gone on to the next fight, or the next duty, without settling my difficulties; and so like others of my sort, battled along through life, as best or as worst I might. I had always hurried more than I had grown. To be sure, I was not altogether to blame for this, since circumstances had driven me fast, and I had yielded to them not always for my own sake; but clearly, it may be as much of a misfortune to be too busy, as to be idle; and one whose subtlest effects are latest perceived. I could now understand it to be reasonable, that if I had taken more time on earth to cultivate myself for the conditions of Heaven, I might have had a different experience at the outset of this life, in which one was never in a hurry.