by a visible space. If that space does not exist between herself and them she suffers.

Here we see the apartness of the divine soul from the lesser soul. though it dwells for a time on the lower plane, that it may be manifested in the flesh. Distinct as the likeness of God, the God-man, it is not separate from the purely human man, but is in that unity that is necessitated by the relation of number and figure. Suffering belongs to the human soul; victory over suffering, to the divine.

Wilfred suffers from being near her, for the friction between the divine and the rational-human wounds the lesser.

"But," says Balzac, "many women hear the tones of a mighty organ when Seraphita enters the church."

It is the intuitive woman-soul, the female, that the Annunciation is made to which the rational-human is deaf, dumb and blind, till it is raised through suffering -- which all it intellectual power cannot prevent -- to where it ceases to probe and begins to really feel. The intuitive human catches the harmony of the divine and escapes the friction of the discord between the lesser and the greater.

Monsieur Becker, both as narrator of Seraphita's history and in his subsequent visits to her in company with his daughter and Wilfred, represents natural doubt, literal accuracy, regard for authority, and blindness to the things of the spirit.

He cannot understand Seraphita-Seraphitus, and