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Don Aloysius turned to look at her, but said nothing She laughed
"Dear Father Aloysius, what a wise priest you are! Not a word falls from those beautifully set lips of yours! If you were a fool--(so many men are!) you would have repeated my phrase, 'the inside of a sun-ray,' with an accent of scornful incredulity, and you would have stared at me with all a fool's contempt! But you are not a fool,--you know or you perceive instinctively exactly what I mean The inside of a sun-ray!--it was disclosed to me suddenly--a veritable miracle! I have seen it many times since, but not with all the wonder and ecstasy of the first revelation I was so young, too! I told a renowned professor at one of the Aes just what I saw, and he was so amazed and confounded at my description of rays that had taken the best scientists years to discover, that he begged to be allowed to exa unusual about them In fact there IS!--and after his exa about 'an exceptionally strong power of vision,' but frankly admitted that power of vision alone would not account for it Anyhow I plainly saw all the rays within one ray--there were seven The ray itself was--or so I fancied--the octave of colour I was little more than a child when this 'interval' of happiness--PERFECT happiness!--was granted to me--I felt as if ahad been opened for h it into heaven!"
"Do you believe in heaven?" asked Aloysius, suddenly
She hesitated
"I used to,--in those days As I have just said I was only a child, and heaven was a real place to els were real presences--"
"And you have lost thenation
"They left me"--she answered--"I did not lose them They simply went"
He was silent His fine, cal more
She resumed-"That was my first experience of real 'happiness' Till then I had lived the usualwhither I was taken, but the disclosure of the sun-ray was a key to individuality, and seean to think for myself, and to find my own character as a creature apart from others My second experience was years after,--just when I left school and when my father took me to see the place where I was born, in the north of Scotland Oh, it is such a wild corner of the world! Beautiful craggy hills and dark, deep lakes--rough moorlands purple with heather and such wonderful skies at sunset! The cottage where my father had lived as a boy when he herded sheep is still there--I have bought it for myself now,--it is a little stone hut of three rooms,--and another one about a mile off where he took my ht that too Yes--I felt a great thrill of happiness when I stood there knee-deep a, with me, on those early scenes of his boyhood when he had scarcely a penny to call his own! Yet HE was sad!--very sad! and told ht of heart and free from care as he did in those old days! And then--then ent to see old Alison--" Here she broke off,--a strange light came into her eyes and she smiled a little "I think I had better not tell you about old Alison!" she said