If she could but have bathed her soul in the dew of Divine consolation at prayer, how much it would have refreshed her! But she seemed to feel only a loathing for the things of God; meditation, in particular, had become her torture, for it appeared as if there especially, the torrent of temptation was let loose. Her understanding was obscured, her memory for spiritual things weakened, her imagination troubled, her heart sad. From the constant strain on. her mind, and the unceasing struggle to do violence to nature, she contracted an habitual headache which added to the difficulty of her external duties, yet through all her multiplied troubles, she never lost either the view of God's presence, or her interior peace; she never formed a desire for the diminution of her crosses, nor ever omitted any observance of rule, and so admirable was her self-control, that only the Mother Superior and her director were aware of her state of mental anguish. Her one only aim was to maintain her patience; to avoid every deliberate imperfection, and to conform to the will of God even without the sensible support of knowing that she did so. The terrible interior trial lasted for more than two years almost without intermission, and then the Divine Consoler of the afflicted came Himself to her aid. As she prayed before the Blessed Sacrament with entire abandonment of her will to the will of God, she seemed interiorly to hear the words, "They that sow in tears shall reap in joy" (Ps. cxxv. 5). She had never before, she says, understood the whole import of those words, although in the daily habit of repeating them in choir, bat now they struck her with their full force, revealing to her for the first time, hitherto hidden springs of encouragement and consolation. The cross was not removed, it is true, but a great increase of esteem and love for it was imparted to her. Thus strengthened, she embraced it with her whole heart, satisfied to bear it to the last moment of existence, if thus she could at last attain the eternal joy to which those blessed words pointed, as to a star of hope illumining the close of life's long path of tears. The cross was not removed, but it was so far lightened by her love for it, that in her renewed courage she could say with heart, as with lips, "Thy yoke, O Lord, is sweet, and Thy burden light!" "I am not tired of suffering, my God! I am not tired of suffering!"