fixed her eyes intently on the sky. These strange proceedings were
directed to a particular end, she was endeavoring to close her senses to
the external world, to become blind, deaf, and impervious to everything
material--the polluting burthen which divided her divine and spiritual
part from the celestia fount whence it was derived; to set her soul free
from its earthly shroud--free to gaze on the god that was its father.
She had already more than once nearly attained to this state by long
fasting and resolute abstraction and once, in a moment she could never
forget, had enjoyed the dizzy ecstasy of feeling herself float, as it
were through infinite space, like a cloud, bathed in glorious radiance.
The fatigue that had been gradually over powering her now seconded her
efforts; she soon felt slight tremor; a cold sweat broke out all over
her; she lost all consciousness of her limbs, and all sense of sighs and
hearing; a fresher and cooler air seemed to revive not her lungs only,
but every part of her body, while undulating rays of red and violet light
danced before her eyes. Was not their strange radiance an emanation
from the eternal glory that she sought? Was not some mysterious power
uplifting her, bearing her towards the highest goal? Was her soul
already free from the bondage of the flesh? Had she indeed become
one with God and had her earnest seeking for the Divinity ended in
glorification? No; her arms which she had thrown up as if to fly,
fell by her side it was all in vain. A pain--a trifling pain in her
foot, had brought her down again to the base world of sense which she
so ardently strove to soar away from.

Several times she took up the mirror, looked in it fixedly as before,
and then gazed upwards; but each time that she lost consciousness of the
material world and that her liberated soul began to move its unfettered
pinions, some little noise, the twitch of a muscle, a fly settling on her
hand, a drop of perspiration falling from her brow on to her cheek,