the bed, warming the tender body with the remnant of youth still burning within her breast; and the going-out of the lamp changed nothing in the blackness of her imaginings...

How silly life seemed to her... how silly and how worthless, were she alone in it; how she would mock at it and scoff, and how fit she would have been to storm all its roads, unafraid and untrembling — had this angel never seen the light... this dark light!

— And yet...

And the mother went on uttering this word — now with the rage of a rebel, then with the sur-render of one who weeps, then without consciousness or feeling. And at last... the darkness began to draw before her eyes strange, frightening pictures, and soon she was staring long at one of them... There was a great fish swimming in the calm sea, and behind it two small hands, stretched open, reaching for it with the eagerness of one crying for help and the yearning of one in anguish.

Then there came to her ear the repeated mewing of a cat, as if from behind the great door. She listened with all her being, striving to wipe that fantastic image from her frightened eyes.

Oh... that sound is like a scream for refuge or supplication; perhaps this cat is a kitten that has lost its mother in the desolate night... perhaps it is frightened and anxious, or hungry and begging for food, or...

And with all the powers hidden in the core of motherhood she leapt from the bed, hurried to the lamp and lit it quickly, and made for the door and opened it — and the pale ray fell on the cat as it fled at a run, and then on a small object — tightly wrapped — lying at the threshold

near the feet of the astonished mother. With trembling hands she lifted that object between her hands and began to strip off

the wrappings — or rather to tear them — until there appeared from within them a fish, still keeping the warmth and the smell of the grill!

— O God!!

She does not know how she flew and woke the sleeping child. She does not know why she woke her, nor does she remember how she began to feed her while the little one could hardly even open her heavy-lidded eyes. All that stayed fixed in her memory is that she passed that night on her knees,

in a kind of trance... kneeling not only to pray, but also to confess the wisdom from on high which has baffled the understanding of philosophers and sages, and which now showed itself in this artless shape.

And when the dawn looked out with its radiant face, the mother held new views, on new principles, on a philosophy which is courage and steadfastness wedded to faith — a faith the hand of life can never touch.