were no dim walls or roof, her little pictures were all gone, the
curtains at her window. The discovery gave her no uneasiness in that
delightful calm. She lay still to think of it all, to wonder, yet
undisturbed. It half amused her that these things should be changed, but
did not rouse her yet with any shock of alteration. The light grew fuller
and fuller round, growing into day, clearing her eyes from the sweet mist
of the first waking. Then she raised herself upon her arm. She was not in
her room, she was in no scene she knew. Indeed it was scarcely a scene at
all, nothing but light, so soft and lovely, that it soothed and caressed
her eyes. She thought all at once of a summer morning when she was a
child, when she had woke in the deep night which yet was day, early, so
early that the birds were scarcely astir, and had risen up with a
delicious sense of daring and of being all alone in the mystery of the
sunrise, in the unawakened world which lay at her feet to be explored, as
if she were Eve just entering upon Eden. It was curious how all those
childish sensations, long forgotten, came back to her as she found
herself so unexpectedly out of her sleep in the open air and light. In
the recollection of that lovely hour, with a smile at herself, so
different as she now knew herself to be, she was moved to rise and look a
little more closely about her, and see where she was.

When I call her a little Pilgrim, I do not mean that she was a child; on
the contrary, she was not even young. She was little by nature, with as
little flesh and blood as was consistent with mortal life; and she was
one of those who are always little for love. The tongue found diminutives
for her, the heart kept her in a perpetual youth. She was so modest and
so gentle, that she always came last, so long as there was any one whom
she could put before her. But this little body, and the soul which was
not little, and the heart which was big and great, had known all the
round of sorrows that fill a woman's life, without knowing any of its