From Sandie she looked back to Mr. Cochrane. Soon he raised his eyes again, for through this long silence he had sat with his face buried in his hands; and again he looked at Sandie, and there shone from him a beam so tender and triumphant that his face was transfigured.
"You are better already, my dear man," he said, "and you are coming back so quickly, retracing your way along the road of error and untruth and unreality. Don't you feel it? Don't you know it?"
There could be no mistake now: Sandie's face had changed. Life, feeble and fluttering, made its impress there; death but flickered where it had dwelt so firmly. A tide had turned. It was low-water still, but the water no longer ebbed; it had begun to flow. And, after a moment, Sandie smiled at those brown, childlike eyes, and the smile was not that fixed and terrified grin which Maud had seen there before.
Cochrane caught, so to speak, and held that look, the first conscious effort of the man who had been dying.
"That's right," he went on; "all that false belief which has made you ill is coming out of your mind. It must come out, all of it. You can't do it of yourself, and I can't do it for you, but Divine Love can. The door of your heart is opening. Oh, let it swing wide, and let the great sun shine in and chase the shadows away. There, wider yet! Sin is gone, illness is gone; all is gone except the great light. If anyone has told you you were sick, forget it. He was mistaken; he didn't stop to think that there can't be any sickness where God is, and He is everywhere, wherever He is asked to be. We have asked Him to come here, and here He is. Put your hand in His, and let Divine Love lead you, and your sin and your fear and your sickness will just roll away as the mists roll away from the moor, as you have so often seen, when the sun rises. You feel that, Sandie--you know it. Your fear has ceased, for there is nothing to be afraid of. Your sickness and weakness are leaving you, because they were born only from night mists which the sun has scattered. You are tired and weak still--yes, yes--because you have been wading through the slime and choking mud of fear and false belief; but you are coming out of that, and already God is setting your feet on the rock. You will not be afraid for any terror by night, nor for the pestilence that walks in darkness, and all day you are safe, for the arrow that flieth by day cannot touch you, nor the sickness that destroys in the noonday of ignorance and unbelief. God and His salvation are come to you, and you will dwell in His house of defence, set very high. So tell me with your own voice, are you not getting well? Do you not know you are better? Are not the false things vanishing?"