he could not cross. She did not perceive this difference, that
Alister knew the gulf had to be crossed. At such a time, too, she
had seen his mother regarding him with a similar expression of loss,
but with a mingling of anxiety that was hers only. It was sweet to
Mercy to see in the eyes of Alister, and in his whole bearing toward
his younger brother, that he was a learner like herself, that they
were scholars together in Ian's school.

A hunger after something beyond her, a something she could not have
described, awoke in her. She needed a salvation of some kind, toward
which she must grow! She needed a change which she could not
understand until it came--a change the greatest in the universe, but
which, man being created with the absolute necessity for it, can be
no violent transformation, can be only a grand process in the divine
idea of development.

She began to feel a mystery in the world, and in all the looks of
it--a mystery because a meaning. She saw a jubilance in every
sunrise, a sober sadness in every sunset; heard a whispering of
strange secrets in the wind of the twilight; perceived a
consciousness of unknown bliss in the song of the lark;--and was
aware of a something beyond it all, now and then filling her with
wonder, and compelling her to ask, "What does it, what can it mean?"
Not once did she suspect that Nature had indeed begun to deal with
her; not once suspect, although from childhood accustomed to hear
the name of Love taken in vain, that love had anything to do with
these inexplicable experiences.

Let no one, however, imagine he explains such experiences by
suggesting that she was in love! That were but to mention another