She had laid down the _Imitation_ upon the seat by her side, and now she took it up. The sight of its familiar pages made her think for the first time, “Do I love God any more?” And immediately afterwards came the thought: “Have I ever loved him?” The knowledge of her love for Androvsky, for this body that she had seen, for this soul that she had seen through the body like a flame through glass, made her believe just then that if she had ever thought--and certainly she had thought--that she loved a being whom she had never seen, never even imaginatively projected, she had deceived herself. The act of faith was not impossible, but the act of love for the object on which that faith was concentrated now seemed to her impossible. For her body, that remained passive, was full of a riot, a fury of life. The flesh that had slept was awakened and knew itself. And she could no longer feel that she could love that which her flesh could not touch, that which could not touch her flesh. And she said to herself, without terror, even without regret, “I do not love, I never have loved, God.” She looked into the book: “Unspeakable, indeed, is the sweetness of thy contemplation, which thou bestowest on them that love thee.” The sweetness of thy contemplation! She remembered Androvsky’s face looking at her out of the heart of the sun as they met for the first time in the blue country. In that moment she put him consciously in the place of God, and there was nothing within her to say, “You are committing mortal sin.” She looked into the book once more and her eyes fell upon the words which she had read on her first morning in Beni-Mora: “Love watcheth, and sleeping, slumbereth not. When weary it is not tired; when straitened it is not constrained; when frightened it is not disturbed; but like a vivid flame and a burning torch it mounteth upwards and securely passeth through all. Whosoever loveth knoweth the cry of this voice.” She had always loved these words and thought them the most beautiful in the book, but now they came to her with the newness of the first spring morning that ever dawned upon the world. The depth of them was laid bare to her, and, with that depth, the depth of her own heart. The paralysis of anguish passed from her. She no longer looked to Nature as one dumbly seeking help. For they led her to herself, and made her look into herself and her own love and know it. “When frightened it is not disturbed--it securely passeth through all.” That was absolutely true--true as her love. She looked down into her love, and she saw there the face of God, but thought she saw the face of human love only. And it was so beautiful and so strong that even the tears upon it gave her courage, and she said to herself: “Nothing matters, nothing can matter so long as I have this love within me. He is going away, but I am not sad, for I am going with him--my love, all that I am--that is going with him, will always be with him.”