* * * * *

Five minutes later she understood.

The first symptom of which she was aware was a powerlessness to formulate her prayers.  Up to that point she had leaned, as has been said, on an enormous Power external to herself, yet approached by an interior way.  Now it required an effort of the will to hold to that Power at all.  In terms of space, let it be said that she had rested, like a child in the dark, upon Something that sustained her:  now she was aware that it no longer sustained her; but that it needed a strong continuous effort to apprehend it at all.  There was still the dark about her; but it was of a different quality—­it cannot be expressed otherwise—­it was as the darkness of an unknown gulf compared to the darkness of a familiar room.  It was of such a nature that space and form seemed meaningless....

The next symptom was a sense of terror, comparable only to that which she had succeeded in crushing down as she stood on the stairs four or five hours before.  That, however, had been external to her; she had entered it.  Now it had entered her, and lay, heavy as pitch, upon the very springs of her interior life.  It was terror of something to come.  That which it heralded was not yet come:  but it was approaching.

The third symptom was the approach itself—­swift and silent, like the running of a bear; so swift that it was upon her through the dark before she could stir or act.  It came upon her, in a flash at the last; and she understood the whole secret.

It is possible only to describe it as, afterwards, she described it herself.  The powerlessness and the terror were no more than the far-off effect of its approach; the Thing itself was the center.

Of that realm of being from which it came she had no previous conception:  she had known evil only in its effects—­in sins of herself and others—­known it as a man passing through a hospital ward sees flushed or pale faces, or bandaged wounds.  Now she caught some glimpse of its essence, in the atmosphere of this bear-like thing that was upon her.  As aches and pains are to Death, so were sins to this Personality—­symptoms, premonitions, causes, but not Itself.  And she was aware that the Thing had come from a spiritual distance so unthinkable and immeasurable, that the very word distance meant little.

Of the Presence itself and its mode she could use nothing better than metaphors.  But those to whom she spoke were given to understand that it was not this or that faculty of her being that, so to speak, pushed against it; but that her entire being was saturated so entirely, that it was but just possible to distinguish her inmost self from it.  The understanding no longer moved; the emotions no longer rebelled; memory simply ceased.  Yet through the worst there remained one minute, infinitesimally small spark of identity that maintained “I am I; and I am not that.”  There was no analysis or consideration; scarcely even