There came a time, towards the end of these three years, when these assaults and temptations became horrible and unbearable. Aerial men and women, with obscene words and still more obscene gestures, seemed to invade her little cell, sweeping round her like the souls of the damned in Dante's “Hell,” inviting her simple and chaste soul to the banquet of lust. Their suggestions grew so hideous and persistent that she fled in terror from the cell that had become like a circle of the infernal regions, and took refuge in the church; but they pursued her thither, though there their power seemed checked. And her Christ seemed far from her. At last she cried out, remembering the words in the vision: “I have chosen suffering for my consolation, and will gladly bear these and all other torments, in the name of the Saviour, for as long as shall please His Majesty.” When she said this, immediately all that assemblage of demons departed in confusion, and a great light from above appeared that illumined all the room, and in the light the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, nailed to the Cross and stained with blood, as He was when by His own blood He entered into the holy place; and from the Cross He called the holy virgin, saying: “My daughter Catherine, seest thou how much I have suffered for thee? Let it not then be hard to thee to endure for Me.” This terrified Charity, and the further she read the less comfort she gained. Her matter-of-fact Manhattan mind could vaguely understand Saint Catherine's mystic nuptials with Christ; but that definite gold ring He placed on her finger, that diamond with four pearls around it, frustrated her comprehension. When she read on and learned how Catherine's utter self-denial offended the other churchmen and church-women; how her confessions of sinful thought brought accusations of sinful deed; how the friars actually threw her out of a church at noon and kicked her as she lay senseless in the dust; how she was threatened with assassination and was turned from the doors of the people; and in what torment she died--from these strange events in the progress of a strange soul through a strange world Charity found no parallel to guide her life along. For hours she read; but all that remained to her was the vision of that poor woman who could find no refuge from her flesh and from the demons that played evil rhapsodies upon the harp-strings of her nerves. Charity closed the book and understood fear. She was now not so much sick of love as afraid of it. She was afraid of solitude, afraid of religion and of the good works that cause ridicule or resentment.