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ease but a kind of sin? Lay your suffering and your sickness from you as an out-worn garment. Rise up! It is Easter morning. One comes, needing you. Rise up and welcome her!

(Mrs. Beeler rises and goes to meet Rhoda, entering from the porch.)

Rhoda. Aunt Mary! You are walking again!

Mrs. Beeler. He told me to arise, and once more my dead limbs heard.

Rhoda. God in His mercy be thanked!

Mrs. Beeler. I rose without knowing what I did. It was as if a wind lifted me.

Rhoda. Yes, yes. For good, this time!

Mrs. Beeler. So different from yesterday. I was still weak then, and my limbs were heavy. Now I feel as if wings were on my shoulders. (She looks toward the outer door, and listens to the singing, now risen to a more joyful strain.) I must go out to them. (She turns to Michaelis.) Say that I may go out, and give them the good tidings of great joy.

Michaelis. May the Lord be with you as you go! (To Rhoda, who starts to help her aunt.) Alone!

Mrs. Beeler. Yes, alone. I want to go alone. (She takes a lily from the vase, and lifting it above her head, goes out through the porch, which is now flooded with sunshine. As she goes out she says:) The Easter sun has risen, with healing in its wings!

Rhoda. I felt something dragging me back. It was Aunt Mary's spirit.

Michaelis. No, it was mine.

Rhoda. Yours?

Michaelis. My spirit, crying to you that I was delivered.

Rhoda. I delivered you. That is enough happiness for one life.

Michaelis. You delivered me, yes. But not as you dream. Yesterday when the multitude began to gather, the thing I had been waiting for all my life was there, and I—because of you—I was not ready. In that blind hour my life sank in ruin.—I had thought love denied to such as had my work to do, and in the darkness of that thought disaster overwhelmed me.—I have come to know that God does not deny love to any of his children, but gives it as a beautiful and simple gift to them all.—Upon each head be the use that is made of it!

Rhoda. It is not I—who—harm you?

Michaelis. It is you who bless me, and give me back the strength that I had lost.

Rhoda. I?

Michaelis. A little while ago you told me your life's bitter story. I tasted your struggle, went down with you into the depths of your anguish, and in those depths,—the miracle! Behold, once more the stars looked down upon me from their places, and I stood wondering as a child wonders. Out of those depths arose new-born happiness and new-risen hope. For in those star-lit depths of pain and grief, I had found at last true love. You needed me. You needed all the powers I had thrown away for your sake. You needed what the whole world needs—healing, healing, and as I rose to meet that need, the power that I had lost poured back into my soul.

Rhoda. Oh, if I thought that could be!

Michaelis. By the mystery that is man, and the mercy that is God, I say it is so.— (Puts his hand on her head, and gazes into her face.) I looked into your eyes once, and they were terrible as an army with banners. I look again now, and I see they are only a girl's eyes, very weak, very pitiful. I told you of a place, high in the great mountains. I tell you now of another place higher yet, in more mysterious mountains. Let us go there together, step by step, from faith to faith, and from strength to strength, for I see depths of life open and heights of love come out, which I never dreamed of till now!

Rhoda. Against your own words they trust you still.

Michaelis. It was you who held them to their trust!

Rhoda. You will go out to them now.

Michaelis. (As he kisses her.) Until the victory!

Rhoda. Shall it be—on earth?

Michaelis. On the good human earth, which I never possessed till now!

Rhoda. But now—these waiting souls, prisoned in their pain—