As in the Mediterranean one may glance down suddenly on a calm day, and see in the blue depths with a strange surprise the sea-weed and the rocks and the fretted sands below, so also in rare hours we see the hidden depths of the soul, over which we have floated in heedless unconsciousness so long, and catch a glimpse of the hills and the valleys of those untravelled regions.
Charles sat very still with his chin in his hands.

His mind did not work.

It looked right down to the heart of things.
There is, perhaps, no time when mental vision is so clear, when the mind is so sane, as when death has come very near to us.

There is a light which he brings with him, which he holds before the eyes of the dying, the stern light, seldom seen, of reality, before which self-deception and meanness, and that which maketh a lie, cower in their native deformity and slip away.
And death sheds at times a strange gleam from that same light upon the souls of those who stand within his shadow, and watch his kingdom coming.

In an awful transfiguration all things stand for what they are.
Evil is seen to be evil, and good to be good.