What did this inner smart and tumult mean, this rebellion of the self against the will which had never yet found its mastery fail it?
It was as though from her childhood till now she had lived in a moral world whereof the aims, the dangers, the joys, were all she knew; and now the walls of this world were crumbling round her, and strange lights, strange voices, strange colors were breaking through.

All the sayings of Christ which had lain closest to her heart for years, tonight for the first time seem to her no longer sayings of comfort or command, but sayings of fire and flame that burn their coercing way through life and thought.

We recite so glibly, 'He that loseth his life shall save it;' and when we come to any of the common crises of experience which are the source and the sanction of the words, flesh and blood recoil.

This girl amid her mountains had carried religion as far as religion can be carried before it meets life in the wrestle appointed it.

The calm, simple outlines of things are blurring before her eyes; the great placid deeps of the soul are breaking up.
To the purest ascetic temper a struggle of this kind is hardly real.
Catherine felt a bitter surprise at her own pain.