one is suffering like this, one is but a step removed from going out of one's mind." Dare I still ask: "Did St Therese really suffer much?" Yet there was always a sweet smile on her lips. And I cannot even bear trifling pains with a smile for the love of God?
(2) Martyrdom of the Heart.—This is even more painful than martyrdom of the body. Even as a child the heart of St. Therese craved for love and affection. "My heart," she wrote, "is naturally sensitive, and because of this, is a cause of much suffering. I wish to offer Jesus all that it can bear." What one might ordinarily lament was for her a source of joy, because of the opportunities it afforded her of proving her love by suffering.
A natural aversion which she felt for another Sister was so strong that her only refuge often lay in flight; yet she was so pleasant toward the Sister that she was suspected of having a particular friendship with her. She volunteered her services to assist a sick nun, though she "knew beforehand the impossibility of satisfying her," and she did it "with such great care that she could not have done better had she been waiting on our Lord Himself." She offered her aid to the portress, who sorely tried her patience by her particularities and unbearable slowness; but Therese's playful amiability did not allow anyone even to guess the violent interior struggle she was waging.
Living in the same convent with three of her sisters, she had much to suffer in curbing her naturally very affective nature and said that God offered her more than one bitter chalice through them. Of all the members of the community she was the one who at recreation associated least of all with her sisters; she worked side by side for many months with her dear Pauline; but never spoke a word to her. "O my little mother," she said later, "how I suffered! I could not open my heart to you and I thought that you no longer knew me."
This martyrdom of the heart was especially bitter in regard to her dearly beloved father in his trying illness. Words failed to express her grief, and she made no attempt to describe it. Her
