It was Mistress Mary’s hour. Her pure, unswerving spirit shone with a white and steady radiance that illuminated Mrs. Grubb’s soul to its very depths, showing her in a flash the feeble flickerings and waverings of her own trivial purposes. At that moment her eye was fitted with a new lens, through which the road to the summit of the Tehachapi Mountains and Mahatmadom suddenly looked long, weary, and profitless, and by means of which the twins were transferred from the comfortable middle distance they had previously occupied to the immediate foreground of duty. The lens might slip, but while it was in place she saw as clearly as another woman. ‘Will you?’ repeated Mistress Mary, wondering at her silence. Mrs. Grubb gave one last glance at the still reproach of Lisa’s face, and one more at the twins, who seemed to loom more formidably each time she regarded them; then drawing a deep breath she said, ‘Yes, I will; I _will_, no matter what happens; but it isn’t enough to give up, and you needn’t suppose I think it is.’ And taking a passive twin by either hand, she passed out of the door into the crowded thoroughfare, and disappeared in the narrow streets that led to Eden Place.