years. There could never be any life equal to the old life, in the
back-water into which she had drifted.

"But to-day how different the outlook! Her ship was flying over a
sunlit sea, the good wind bulging out the canvas. She felt the
thrill of excitement and adventure in her veins as she stood at the
helm and gazed across the dancing water. It seemed to her as if she
had been asleep and the "Celestial Surgeon" had come and 'stabbed
her spirit broad awake.' Joy had done its work, and sorrow;
responsibility had come with its stimulating spur, and the ardent
delight of battle in a great crusade. New powers she had discovered
in herself, new possibilities in the world around her. She was
ready for her 'adventure brave and new.' Rabbi Ben Ezra had waited
for death to open the gate to it, but to Hildeguard it seemed that
she was in the midst of it now, that 'adventure brave and new' in
which death itself was also an adventure.

"'The Power of an Endless Life'--the words seemed to hover around
her, just eluding her grasp, just beyond her comprehension, yet
something of their significance she seemed to catch. She remembered
the flash of intuition as she stood beside Frances' newly-made
grave, but she realized, her eyes on the old pictures, that it
would take æons to understand all it meant, to exhaust all the
wonder of the idea. She could only bring to it her undeveloped
powers of thought and of imagination, but she knew that stretching
away, hid in an inexpressible light, lay depths undreamt of. To her
nineteenth-century intellect life could only mean evolution--life
ever taking to itself new forms, developing itself in new ways. At
the bed-rock of all her thought lay the consciousness of 'the Power
not ourselves, which makes for Righteousness.'