The window filled up
with song and colour, and all along the window there was a
continual transmutation of colour and song. The figures grew
taller, and they breathed extraordinary life. It sang like a song
within them, and it flowed about them and out of them in a sort of
pearl-coloured mist. The vision clove the church along and across,
and through it she could see the priest saying his Mass, and when
he raised the Host above his head, Biddy saw Our Lord look at her,
and His eyes brightened as if with love of her. He seemed to have
forgotten the saints that sang His praises so beautifully, and
when He bent towards her and she felt His presence about her, she
cried out:--
"He is coming to take me in His arms!"
And it was then that Biddy fell out of her place and lay at length
on the floor of the church, pale as a dead woman. The clerk went
to her, but he could not carry her out; she lay rigid as one who
had been dead a long while and she muttered, "He is coming to put
the gold crown on my head." The clerk moved away, and she swooned
again.
Her return to her ordinary perceptions was slow and painful. The
people had left long ago, and she tottered out of the empty church
and followed the road to her cabin without seeing it or the people
whom she met on the road. At last a woman took her by the arm and
led her into her cabin, and spoke to her. She could not answer at
first, but she awoke gradually, and she began to remember that she
had heard music in the window and that Our Lord had sung to her.
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