492.
_Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee O Lord, and my Thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of Thy only Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Amen._ This appeared to have been copied last of all.

The ink was still wet upon the parchment.
The candles had burned down to the sockets, and gone out.

The Prioress's chair, pushed back from the table, was empty.
As the dawn crept in, it discovered her kneeling before the shrine of the Madonna, absorbed in prayer and meditation.
She had not yet taken her final decision as to the future; but her hesitation was now rather the slow, wondering, opening of the mind to accept an astounding fact, than any attempt to fight against it.
Not for one moment could she doubt that our Lady, in answer to Hugh's impassioned prayers, had chosen to make plain the Divine will, by means of this wonderful and most explicit vision to the aged lay-sister, Mary Antony.
When, having left Mary Antony, as she supposed, asleep, the Prioress had reached her own cell, her first adoring cry, as she prostrated herself before the shrine, had taken the form of the thanksgiving once offered by the Saviour: "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." She and the Bishop had indeed been wise and prudent in their own estimation, as they discussed this difficult problem.

Yet to them no clear light, no Divine vision, had been vouchsafed.
It was to this aged nun, the most simple--so thought the Prioress--the most humble, the most childlike in the community, that the revelation had been given.
The Prioress remembered the nosegay of weeds offered to our Lady; the games with peas; the childish pleasure in the society of the robin; all the many indications that second-childhood had gently come at the close of the long life of Mary Antony; just as the moon begins as a sickle turned one way and, after coming to the full, wanes at length to a sickle turned the other way; so, after ninety years of life's pilgrimage, Mary Antony was a little child again--and of such is the Kingdom of Heaven; and to such the Divine will is most easily revealed.
The Prioress was conscious that she and the Bishop--the wise and prudent--had so completely arrived at decisions, along the lines of their own points of view, that their minds were not ready to receive a Divine unveiling.