Lucy began to understand how martyrs can smile and speak cheerfully at their stake, because from that standpoint their developed spiritual stature lifts them to wider horizons than others know. What a message the blue sky must have had for the white depths of the Colosseum! Yet these things can never be told or written. Whoever would know them must learn them for themselves, though it be but “in part.” But it is because of these things that faith and hope and love have never died out of the world, since all the forces of unfaith and despair and cruelty end only in producing them afresh, because they are of the eternal life of God. Lucy’s picture-dealer felt kindly towards the quiet client who gave so little trouble, showed so little self-conceit, and, while steadily business-like, was never exacting or suspicious. He thought “it would do Mrs. Challoner no harm” if he told her that one or two purchasers had said, “There is something in that lady’s sketches which we miss in many greater artists,” one old lady adding that “when she looked at Lucy’s pictures, she felt as if there was a soft voice beside her whispering something pleasant.” That brought the tears to Lucy’s eyes and made her feel very humble, possibly because she could not deny to herself that there was truth in the gracious words. Oh, to have Charlie again, and yet to be all that she had grown into since he had gone away—since this awful silence! And an inner voice bade her take cheer, for was not this what was sure to happen here or there—sooner or later? “What a pitiful bliss we should make for ourselves if we were left to do it without God!” Lucy cried, thinking even of the sweetest dreams of courting days, the best aspirations of married life. For after one taste of “the peace which passeth understanding,” one vision of the joy which has absorbed the strength of sorrow into it, mere “happiness” looks but a poor thing, even as a child’s cheap, pretty toy shows beside a masterpiece of genius. Lucy’s slumbers now were deep and calm. Almost every morning she awoke with a sense of refreshment, as when one returns to labour after being among kind hearts in lovely places. Sometimes she knew she had dreamed, and such dream memories as lingered, elusive, for a few waking moments, were always bright and cheering. Visions of Charlie had come during the first nights after the great blow. He never seemed to speak, but he was always smiling, always confident that all was well and would be well. His dream form always appeared in positions and in scenes which Lucy could recall as having figured in peculiarly happy times. And yet these scenes had been at the time so slight and evanescent that Lucy had quite forgotten them till the dream revived the remembrance. It was as if, in her sleep, her soul was drawn so near the light and warmth of love that even the invisible records of memory started into view.