But this tall, clear-eyed young woman was so drawn by the fascination of the forlorn shrines that she followed the path they lined, and it led her astray. She laid a spray of flowering rosemary on the Seventh--"for remembrance"--and sighed. For she who bore that sevenfold sword of sorrow in her heart could never have borne this of looking on, helpless, and baffled in every wild effort to save, at the gradual ruin and degradation of any she loved; that barren and bitter sorrow at least was spared her. But what if she, whose pain had been so fruitful to man, could hear, and from her place of peace give balm to crushed and broken hearts? Human sympathy may not be confined to this brief passage through time and space, she mused. The path led with a sudden turn through garden ground, unfenced, then past a pink house with a pergola, and ended at an abrupt fall of narrow vine terraces down the ravine. Thence was seen a fuller, broader prospect facing south, bounded by a sea of purple and gold shot with crimson. There she turned, and climbing a broad flight of steps leading to the low-walled summit of the ridge, became aware of a large wooden cross standing against the pure sky on the top, as if with open arms of welcome. Above and around it were quivering spires of cypress and plumy tops of eucalyptus, and, between black cypress boughs, the white gleam of convent walls. The weight of silent, secret grief grew to a physical burden on those weary steps; her heart sank and died when she reached the top, and stood in rich sunshine at the foot of the great bare cross, its arms uplifted in witness and welcome for many and many a mile round, and listlessly spelt out the words cut round the centre: Ave, crux, spes unica! Then something gave way in her aching breast, the four healing words echoed and found response in her heart. "Ave, ave!" she faltered, her slender figure bowed in the golden light, the healing scent of eucalyptus blossom floating down to her, and the majesty of those soaring mountain peaks and buttressed hill-flanks spreading far above in the hush and glow of the passing day. There, with her face pressed to the sun-warmed wood and her arms clasping it, a huge weight--"the burden and the mystery of all this unintelligible world"--fell away from her heart, and the great prayer that has no words filled it with peace beyond understanding--the _spes unica_--the only road to solution of all the tangled mystery of life.