I had never seen you before, and still I felt that I had known you always.

You did not speak, and I did not speak, but you looked into my heart and saw its trouble.

Then I looked into your heart, and read what was written.

And this was written: "'Woman whom I knew before the Past began, and whom I shall know when the Future is ended, why do you weep ?' "And my heart answered, 'I weep because I am lost upon the waters of the earth, because Hope has rent her starry robes, and in everlasting darkness I must seek for light that is not.' Then your heart said, '_I_ will show you light,' and bending forward you touched me on the breast.
"And suddenly an agony shook me like the agonies of birth and death, and the sky was full of great-winged angels who rolled up the mist as a cloth, and drew the veils from the eyes of Night, and there, her feet upon the globe, and her star-set head piercing the firmament of heaven, stood Hope breathing peace and beauty.

She looked north and south and east and west, then she looked upwards through the arching vaults of heaven, and wherever she set her eyes, bright with holy tears, the darkness shrivelled and sorrow ceased, and from corruption arose the Incorruptible.