Neville's name for the part of the process he says outright that he cannot explain. The awakening is neither earned nor scheduled by the man it happens to: God alone knows how to strike that mind at the right moment in its journey, and he hits this one tonight and that one tomorrow night. Asked about it four days earlier, he answered that it is called election and confessed that he does not know the mystery of God's election, while insisting in the same breath that not one can fail, because if one were lost God would be lost. The love is elective in the sense that the choosing belongs to the lover, not in the sense that anyone is left out. What he will say about it is only this: the power used to turn a man around is inconceivable, each blow feels like the end and is not, and no one has the power to see in advance whether the root has taken or when the branch will come.