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Book, page 451 / 547 THE PORCH OF HADES. When Arctura woke from her unnatural sleep, she lay a while without thought, then began to localize herself. The last place she recalled was the inn where they had tea: she must have been there taken ill, she thought, and was now in a room of the same. It was quite dark: they might have left a light by her! She lay comfortably enough, but had a suspicion that the place was not over clean, and was glad to find herself not undrest. She turned on her side: something pulled her by the wrist. She must have a bracelet on, and it was entangled in the coverlet! She tried to unclasp it, but could not: which of her bracelets could it be? There was something attached to it!--a chain--a thick chain! How odd! What could it mean? She lay quiet, slowly waking to fuller consciousness.--Was there not a strange air, a dull odour in the room? Undefined as it was, she had smelt it before, and not long since!--It was the smell of the lost chapel!--But that was at home in the castle! she had left it two days before! Was she going out of her mind? The dew of agony burst from her forehead. She would have started up, but was pulled hard by the wrist! She cried on God.--Yes, she was lying on the very spot where that heap of woman-dust had lain! she was manacled with the same ring from which that woman's arm had wasted--the decay of centuries her slow redeemer! Her being recoiled so wildly from the horror, that for a moment she seemed on the edge of madness. But madness is not the sole refuge from terror! Where the door of the spirit has once been opened wide to God, there is he, the present help in time of trouble! With him in the house, it is not only that we need fear nothing, but that is there which in its own being and nature casts out fear. God and fear cannot be together. It is a God far off that causes fear. "In thy presence is fulness of joy." Such a sense of absolute helplessness overwhelmed Arctura that she felt awake in her an endless claim upon the protection of her original, the source of her being. And what sooner would any father have of his children than action on such claim! God is always calling us as his children, and when we call him as our father, then, and not till then, does he begin to be satisfied. And with that there fell upon Arctura a kind of sleep, which yet was not sleep; it was a repose such as perhaps is the sleep of a spirit.
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