Carolina drew Rosemary’s face down to hers and laid her cheek against it.
There was a long silence between them. Then Carolina said, fearfully:
"Most certainly. You won’t even limp. You will be made perfectly whole!"
"Just as you were before--except these bonds."
"But what do I want to get well for? I have lost Guildford!"
Rosemary felt her two hands grasped firmly, and without thinking Carolina raised herself to a sitting posture in bed without pain.
"Do you mean to tell me that there is the--that Christian Science teaches that there is any remote possibility of my getting Guildford back?"
"Guildford belongs to you, and has never been lost. It is only error which makes such a law for you. Truth emancipates everybody and everything."
"I don’t believe it!" said Carolina. "I can’t! It’s too good to be true! I don’t understand it!"
"Because you are sitting up in bed, and you raised yourself without pain. That is because, for a moment, your soul accepted God as Love and the source of all supply. Unconsciously your mind looked into His mind, and you saw the truth."
"I believe that I could get up!" said Carolina, in a sort of ecstasy.
"I know that you can! Give me your hand."
Rosemary helped Carolina to dress, and in half an hour Carolina was sitting, for the first time in months, in a chair by the window, with Rosemary reading and marking for her the passages in "Science and Health" which bore immediately upon her case. Carolina’s mind opened under it like a flower.
"Oh, I need so much teaching!" cried Carolina. "Who will help me?"
"Did you know that my mother is a practitioner and holds classes?" asked Rosemary.
Carolina almost felt her new-found rock melting beneath her feet at this intelligence.
"No, I did not. Will she take me? And will you help?"
"We will both do all we can for you with the greatest joy."
When Rosemary left, Kate came in and Carolina explained everything to her.
Kate called Noel St. Quentin by telephone and told him that Carolina had gone insane.
The next morning Carolina awakened with the happy consciousness that something pleasant had happened. Hitherto she had gone to sleep, glad of the respite of a few hours of unconsciousness. Simply not to know--simply not to be awake and to realize her load of pain and disappointment, had been her prayer. With her definite aim in life swept away, she felt rudderless, forlorn, despairing.