She sat down.

A great and heavenly stillness came and wrapped itself about her, a
soft and velvety stillness; to shut out gasp or murmur or stifled
titter.

The miracle had happened! It was as if an inner light had been
switched on; a warm white light which tingled through to every fibre
of her being. Surely this was the flame divine! It was her soul
being born anew. . .


CHAPTER II

"Your True Friend, Melissa M."

Missy knew, the moment she opened her eyes, that golden June
morning, that it was going to be a happy day. Missy, with Poppylinda
purring beside her, found this mysterious, irradiant feeling flowing
out of her heart almost as tangible as a third live being in her
quaint little room. It seemed a sort of left-over, still vaguely
attached, from the wonderful dream she had just been having. Trying
to recall the dream, she shut her eyes again; Missy's one regret, in
connection with her magical dreams, was that the sparkling essence
of them was apt to become dim when she awoke. But now, when she
opened her eyes, the suffusion still lingered.

For a long, quiet, blissful moment, she lay smiling at the spot
where the sunlight, streaming level through the lace-curtained