angels look with awe, and which brings those tears which are salvation
into the eyes of God.

I went back to my house, weary yet calm. There were many in my house;
but because my heart was full of one who was not there, I knew not those
who were there. I sat me down where she had been. I was weary, more
weary than ever before, but calm. Then I bethought me that I knew no
more than at the first, that I had lived among the unseen as if they
were my neighbours, neither fearing them, nor hearing those wonders
which they have to tell. As I sat with my head in my hands, two talked
to each other close by: 'Is it true that we have failed?' said one; and
the other answered, 'Must not all fail that is not sent of the Father?'
I was silent; but I knew them, they were the voices of my father and my
mother. I listened as out of a faint, in a dream.

While I sat thus, with these voices in my ears, which a little while
before would have seemed to me more worthy of note than anything on
earth, but which now lulled me and comforted me, as a child is comforted
by the voices of its guardians in the night, there occurred a new thing
in the city like nothing I had heard before. It roused me
notwithstanding my exhaustion and stupor. It was the sound as of some
one passing through the city suddenly and swiftly, whether in some
wonderful chariot, whether on some sweeping mighty wind, I cannot tell.
The voices stopped that were conversing beside me, and I stood up, and
with an impulse I could not resist went out, as if a king were passing
that way. Straight, without turning to the right or left, through the
city, from one gate to another, this passenger seemed going; and as he
went there was the sound as of a proclamation, as if it were a herald
denouncing war or ratifying peace. Whosoever he was, the sweep of his
going moved my hair like a wind. At first the proclamation was but as a