"But you feel so, dear Sister Madeline, do you not? You can understand how I am burdened, and how I long to have the bands undone?" "Yes, Pauline, I can understand." I am not inclined to give much weight to my own opinions, and as for my feelings, I know they were, then, those of a child, and in many ways will always be. I can only say what comforted me, and what I longed for. There had always been great force to me, in the Scripture that says, "Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them, and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained," even before I felt the burden of my sins. I had once seen the ordination of a priest, and I suppose that added to the weight of the words ever after in my mind. I never had any doubt of the power then conferred, and I no sooner felt the guilt and stain of sin upon my soul, than I yearned to hear the pardon spoken, that Heaven offered to the penitent. I had been tangibly smitten; I longed to be tangibly healed. Whatever shame and pain there was about laying bare my soul before another, I gladly embraced it, as one poor means at my command of showing to Him whom I had offended, that my repentance was actual, that I stopped at no humiliation. It may very well be that these feelings would find no place in larger, grander, more self-reliant natures; that what healed my soul would only wound another. I am not prepared to think that one remedy is cure for all diseases, but I know what cured mine. I bless God for "the soothing hand that Love on Conscience laid." I mark that hour as the beginning of a fresh and favored life; the dawning of a hope that has not yet lost its power "to tame The haughty brow, to curb the unchastened eye, And shape to deeds of good each wavering aim." CHAPTER XX. THE HOUR OF DAWN. Slowly light came, the thinnest dawn, Not sunshine, to my night; A new, more spiritual thing, An advent of pure light. All grief has its limits, all chastenings their pause; Thy love and our weakness are sorrow's two laws. The winter that followed seemed very long and uneventful. After Sister Madeline went away, my days settled themselves into the routine in which they continued to revolve for many months. I was as lonely as formerly, save for the companionship of well-chosen books, and for the direction of another mind, which I felt to be the truest support and guidance. I was taught to bend to my uncle's wishes, and to give up constant church-going, and visiting among the poor, which would have been such a resource and occupation to me. And so my life, outwardly, was very little changed from former years--years that I had found almost insupportable, without any sorrow; and yet, strange to say, I was not unhappy.