court of the High Priest and have gloried in discipleship: she
could have taken the thief's place beside Him on the cross, and she
would not have exchanged those moments of torture in companionship
with Him for a life of earthly bliss. But--that fatal BUT--did He
ever live, did He still live, did He love her, did He know how much
she loved Him? Thus it has always been. There is an impulse in man
which drives him to faith; the commonplace world does not satisfy
him; he is forced to assume a divine object for his homage and love,
and when he goes out into the fields it has vanished.

Kate did not call again upon the priest. Her father came to the
conclusion that there was nothing in his suspicions, and that she
had been suffering from one of her not uncommon fits of nervous
restlessness and depression. This was a mercy, for his bodily
health had begun to fail. The winter was very severe, and in the
dark days just before Christmas he took to his bed and presently
died, having suffered no pain and with no obscuration of his mind
until the last ten minutes. Kate had nursed him with pious care:
she was alone with him and closed his eyes about four o'clock in the
morning. At first she was overcome with hysterical passion, and
this was succeeded by shapeless thoughts which streamed up in her
incessantly as the mists stream up from a valley at sunrise. Not
until day broke did she leave the room and waken the household.

An epoch is created rather by the person than by the event. The
experience which changes one man is nothing to another. Some will
pass through life without a mark from anything that happens to them;
others are transformed by a smile or a cloud. So also the same
experience will turn different men into totally different paths.
Kate had never seen death before. It smote her with such force that