What was happening? Maud asked herself that with thrilled and bewildered wonder. She had to believe the evidence of her own ears, when she heard Sandie saying--faintly, indeed, but audibly, and in his natural voice--that he was better. She had to believe the evidence of her own eyes, which showed her the pallid mask exchanged for the face of a living being. He had been pulled back from the gate of death, even as the door was being opened for him to pass through. The colour was coming back to that ghastly clay-hued face; terror and suffering were being expunged from his eyes; the short, panting breath, whistling from between clenched teeth and backdrawn lips, became natural respiration. And from under the bed-clothes there came no longer jumping movements; the limbs lay still.
Yet it was impossible; she could not yet believe the evidence of her own senses. It must be some trick, some illusion. And even as the thought entered her mind, Cochrane, for the first time, turned to her.
"You mustn't doubt either, dear lady," he said, "for you know that all I have been saying is quite true; it is the only thing that is completely true. Come, take all other thought out of your mind. If you have been questioning the truth of what you see here, reverse that doubt. Tell Sandie that you know God is making him well, just because he is beginning to know that neither illness nor sin nor fear can exist in the presence of Infinite Love. Tell him that."
Maud took a step forward, and stood at the foot of the bed. She had to believe what her eyes showed her, and they showed her no longer that unrecognisable death-mask, but the face of Sandie--thin and pale and tired, it is true, but his living face.
"It is quite true, Sandie," she said. "You are getting well. It is your faith in the Infinite Love that makes you well."
Cochrane turned to the bed again, and spoke in a voice so tender and strong that Maud felt a sudden lump rise in her throat.
"Why, Sandie," he said, "your faith is spreading round you like calm waters, and Infinite Love shines through it like the sun at noonday. Faith is streaming from you, and the same knowledge streams from us all--Lady Maud and me. And the streams are joining, and rushing in spate together over what was a dry and barren hillside. Listen to the voice of them, shouting their praise to the Lord. By Jove! He is being good to you, isn't He?"