noon
Let it not then be hard to thee to endure for Me . '' This terrified Charity , and the further she read the less comfort she gained . Her matter-of-fact Manhattan mind could vaguely understand Saint Catherine 's mystic nuptials with Christ ; but that definite gold ring He placed on her finger , that diamond with four pearls around it , frustrated her comprehension . When she read on and learned how Catherine 's utter self-denial offended the other churchmen and church-women ; how her confessions of sinful thought brought accusations of sinful deed ; how the friars actually threw her out of a church at noon and kicked her as she lay senseless in the dust ; how she was threatened with assassination and was turned from the doors of the people ; and in what torment she died -- from these strange events in the progress of a strange soul through a strange world Charity found no parallel to guide her life along . For hours she read ; but all that remained to her was the vision of that poor woman who could find no refuge from her flesh and from the demons that played evil rhapsodies upon the harp-strings of her nerves . Charity closed the book and understood fear . She was now not so much sick of love as afraid of it .