Here, we are no longer in the well-known valleys of human and psychic life. We find ourselves at the door of the third enclosure: that of the divine life of the mystics. We have to grope timidly, and make sure of every footstep, as we cross the threshold. And even when the threshold is crossed, where shall certainty be found? Where shall we discover those marvellous laws that we are perhaps constantly disobeying: laws of whose existence our conscience is ignorant, though our soul has been warned? Whence comes the shadow of a mysterious transgression that at times creeps over our life and makes it so hard to bear? What are the great spiritual sins of which we can be guilty? Will it be our shame to have striven against our soul, or is there an invisible struggle between our soul and God? And is this struggle so strangely silent that not even a whisper floats on the air? Is there a moment when we can hear the queen whose lips are sealed? She is sternly silent when events do but float on the surface; but there are others perhaps that we scarcely heed, which have their roots deep down in eternity. Some one is dying, some one looks at you, or cries, some other is coming towards you for the first time, or an enemy is passing by—may she not perhaps whisper then? And if you listened to her, while already you no longer love, in the future, the friend at whom you now are smiling? But all this is nothing, and is not even near to the outer lights of the abyss. One cannot speak of these things—the solitude is too great. ‘In truth,’ says Novalis, ‘it is only here and there that the soul bestirs itself; when will it move as a whole, and when will humanity begin to feel with one conscience?’ It is only when this takes place that some will learn. We must wait in patience till this superior conscience be gradually, slowly, formed. Then perhaps some one will come to whom it will be given to express what it is that we all feel as regards this side of the soul, which is like to the face of the moon, that none have perceived since the world began. ON WOMEN ON WOMEN