“That is beautiful!” cried Barbara. “'They said, Here we be! And so--'--What is it?” “'And so with cheerfulness they showed light unto him that made them.'” “I will read every word of Baruch!” said Barbara. “Is there much of him?” “No; very little.” A silence followed. Then again Barbara spoke, and she clung a little closer to her husband. “I want to tell you something that came to me one night when we were in London,” she said. “It was a miserable time that--before I found you up in the orchestra there! and then hell became purgatory, for there was hope in it. I saw so many miserable things! I seemed always to come upon the miserable things. It was as if my eyes were made only to see miserable things--bad things and suffering everywhere. The terrible city was full of them. I longed to help, but had to wait for you to set me free. You had gone from my knowledge, and I was very sad, seeing nothing around me but a waste of dreariness. I kept asking God to give me patience, and not let me fancy myself alone. But the days were dismal, and the balls and dinners frightful. I seemed in a world without air. The girls were so silly, the men so inane, and the things they said so mawkish and colourless! Their compliments sickened me so, that I was just hungry to hide myself. But at last came what I want to tell you. “One morning, after what seemed a long night's dreamless sleep, I awoke; but it was much too early to rise; so I lay thinking--or more truly, I hope, being thought into, as Mr. Wingfold says. Many of the most beautiful things I had read, scenes of our Lord's life on earth, and thoughts of the Father, came and went. I had no desire to sleep again, or any feeling of drowsiness; but in the midst of fully conscious thought, found myself in some other place, of which I only knew that there was firm ground under my feet, and a soft white radiance of light about me. The remembrance came to me afterwards, of branches of trees spreading high overhead, through which I saw the sky: but at the time I seemed not to take notice of what was around me. I was leaning against a form tall and grand, clothed from the shoulders to the ground in a black robe, full, and soft, and fine. It lay in thickly gathered folds, touched to whiteness in the radiant light, all along the arms encircling, without at first touching me.