windows; and it was her favorite hour to be there, the coming on of
twilight.

All day until nearly sundown a cold April rain had fallen. These
contradictory spring days of young green and winter cold the pious folk
of older lands and ages named the days of the ice saints. They really
fall in May, but this had been like one of them. So raw and chill had
been the atmosphere of the grateless garret that the window-frames had
been fastened down, their rusty catches clamped.

At the window she stood looking out and looking up toward a scene of
splendor in the heavens.

It was sunset, the rain was over, the sky had cleared. She had been
tracing the retreating line of sunlight on the hillside opposite. First
it crossed the street to the edge of the park, then crossed the wet
grass at the foot of the slope; then it passed upward over the bowed
dripping shrubbery and lingered on the tree-tops along the crest; and
now the western sky was aflame behind the cathedral.

It was a gorgeous spectacle. The cathedral seemed not to be situated in
the city, not lodged on the rocks of the island, but to be risen out of
infinite space and to be based and to abide on the eternity of light.
Long she gazed into that sublime vision, full of happiness at last, full
of peace, full of prayer.

Standing thus at her windows at that hour, she stood on the pinnacle of
her life's happiness.

From the dark slippery street shrill familiar sounds rose to her ear and