But I had not yet learnt any of this, and I could not accept, I could not swallow this terrible cup. I thought of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. He understood and knew all pain; I had His companionship, but He offered me no cessation of this pain. It must be borne; had He not borne His own up to the bitter end? I shrank, appalled, from the suffering I was already in and the suffering that lay before me. Relief from this agony, relief, relief! But there was no relief. In utter darkness all must be gone through. At least I was not so foolish as to attribute all this horror that was closing in upon the world to the direct Will of God: I could perceive that, on the contrary, it was the spirit of Anti-Christ, it was the will of Man with his greeds, his cruelty, his self-sufficient pride, together with a host of other evils, which had brought all this to pass. But could not--would not--God deliver the innocent; must all alike descend into the pit? I tried to obtain relief by casting this burden on to Christ, and was not able to accomplish it. I tried to draw the succour of God down into my heart, and I tried to throw myself out and up to Him--I could do neither: the vast barrier remained; Faith could not take me through it. A horrible kind of second sight now possessed me, so that, although I never heard one word from my husband, I became aware of much that was happening to him--knew him pressed perpetually backwards, fighting for his life, knew him at times lying exhausted out in the open fields at night. At last I began to fear for my reason; I became afraid of the torture of the nights and sat up reading, forcing my mind to concentrate itself upon the book--the near-to-hand help of the book was more effective than the spiritual help in which something altogether vital was still missing. Relief only came when after a month a letter reached me from my husband, saying that the terrible retreat was over and he safe. Months and years dragged by. Sometimes the pain of it all was eased; sometimes it increased. As grass mown down and withered in the fields gives out the pleasant scent of hay, so in her laceration and her anguish did the soul, I wondered, give off some Pain-Song pleasing to Almighty God. At first I recoiled with terror from this thought; finally love overcame the terror--I was willing to have it so, if it pleased Him. My soul reached down into great and fearful depths. I envied the soldiers dying upon the battlefields; life was become far more terrible to me than death. Looking back upon my struggles, I see with profound astonishment how unaware I was of my impudence to God in attributing to Him qualities of cruelty and callousness, such as are to be found only amongst the lowest men!