reached the brim of her life's cup, and a hand had emptied it! She
raised her head, half rose, and looked around her. A moment more,
and she stood erect, with the air of a conqueror: she had won the
battle! Dareful she had met her spiritual foes; they had withdrawn
defeated! She raised her withered arm above her head, a pæan of
unholy triumph in her throat--when suddenly her eyes fixed in a
ghastly stare.--What was she seeing?

I looked, and saw: before her, cast from unseen heavenly mirror,
stood the reflection of herself, and beside it a form of splendent
beauty, She trembled, and sank again on the floor helpless. She
knew the one what God had intended her to be, the other what she
had made herself.

The rest of the night she lay motionless altogether.

With the gray dawn growing in the room, she rose, turned to Mara,
and said, in prideful humility, "You have conquered. Let me go into
the wilderness and bewail myself."

Mara saw that her submission was not feigned, neither was it real.
She looked at her a moment, and returned:

"Begin, then, and set right in the place of wrong."

"I know not how," she replied--with the look of one who foresaw and
feared the answer.

"Open thy hand, and let that which is in it go."