He looked at the tall window.  It was nothingness, colorless, dangerously invisible.  It was so clean that he imagined he could reach past it and touch the bricks beyond, yet he knew it was there to thwart his hand.  For one thing, it muffled the street noise and contained his own with perhaps just a hint of echo.  It stood guard against wind and temperature and butterflies, should they attack.  Yes, without touching it, he felt its presence. 

There was something else that he knew was there.  It was the reason he had come.  His day and perhaps more than a day would be dedicated to it.  He had come to free the saint within the glass.  He knew that she was there, dangerously invisible because nothing of herself.  She had lived like that, letting the light flow through her until she disappeared and only light was left. 

How is it, he thought, arranging his tools, that one could hide like that, in plain sight?  Was it the honesty of thousands of moments, bits of humility that melted like sand in the furnace of charity?  Ah, I am nothing, she would say, but look beyond me to what illumines me and consumes me with the vision of the other side. 

“All very well for you, Saint Therese,” the worker said out loud, “but I need to bring out a bit of you, just a suggestion of yourself, for those who do not realize that you are here.”

He picked up his etching tools and began to release her, taking care that she was still the transparent channel of light that God had intended.