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The people before me fell on their knees together and left me standing up alone. As a matter of fact I had been caught gaping at the ceremony quite new to me, and had not expected a move of that sort. The ruffian kneeling within a foot of me thumped and bellowed in an ecstasy of piety.

After an hour of this ecstasy, Athos softly raised his hands as white as wax; the smile did not quit his lips, and he murmured low, so low as scarcely to be audible, these three words addressed to God or to Raoul: "HERE I AM!" And his hands fell slowly, as though he himself had laid them on the bed. Death had been kind and mild to this noble creature.

And she said to herself: "If we can be happy together only when I give way to him, I must give way to him." And there was ecstasy in her yielding. "After all," she said to herself, "perhaps it's very important that he should go to the School of Art." She solaced herself with such thoughts on three solitary evenings a week, waiting for him to come home.

It was said that in the deep peacefulness of night the chosen ones undoubtedly beheld the Virgin, but powerful protection was needed to obtain such a favour as had been granted to Marie; for nowadays the reverend Fathers scarcely liked to grant it, as several sufferers had died during the long vigil, falling asleep, as it were, in the midst of their ecstasy.

And a beautiful fairyland it is, where love triumphs for the most part, not in heedless ecstasy along flower-bestrewn ways, but through self-sacrifice and suffering mutually accepted and mutually endured.

In not a few cases the termination even appears to be a sort of ecstasy. Of course there are painful deaths, but I do not believe such is at all the general rule. Of the many hundreds I myself saw die in the fields and hospitals during the secession war the cases of mark' d suffering or agony in extremis were very rare.

One said: "Oh, the Virgin's face is full of the ecstasy of a joy that is complete that leaves nothing more to be desired on earth!" The other said: "Ah, that wonderful face is so humble, so pleading it says as plainly as words could say it: 'I fear; I tremble; I am unworthy. But Thy will be done; sustain Thou Thy servant!"

He looked at Saxon, noted the ravished ecstasy of her face, and stopped the horses. All the eastern sky was blushing to rose, which descended upon the mountains, touching them with wine and ruby. Sonoma Valley began to fill with a purple flood, laying the mountain bases, rising, inundating, drowning them in its purple.

She could have imagined a seraphic presence in the room, that bade her arise and live; take the cup of the wells of youth arrested at her lips by her marriage; quit her wintry bondage for warmth, light, space, the quick of simple being. And the strange pure ecstasy was not a transient electrification; it came in waves on a continuous tide; looking was living; walking flying.

Little wonder if a'body's talking, when ye make a'body yer confidants! But as you say, Mr. Weir, most kindly, most considerately, most truly, I'm sure, I have naething to do with it. And I think I'll better be going. I'll be wishing you good evening, Mr. Weir." And she made him a stately curtsey, shaking as she did so from head to foot, with the barren ecstasy of temper.