. I am heavy with sleep."

And he could sleep! That was such an aggravation of his offense. She
turned sometimes and looked at his handsome flushed face, but
otherwise she sat hour after hour silent and almost motionless, her
hands clasped upon her knee, her heart anticipative of wrong, and with
a perverse industry considering sorrows that had not as yet even
called to her. Alas! alas! the unhappy can never persuade themselves
that "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

CHAPTER III.

JAN'S OPPORTUNITY.

"Thou broad-billowed sea,
Never sundered from thee,
May I wander the welkin below;
May the plash and the roar
Of the waves on the shore
Beat the march to my feet as I go;
Ever strong, ever free,
When the breath of the sea,
Like the fan of an angel, I know;
Ever rising with power,
To the call of the hour,
Like the swell of the tides as they flow."

--BLACKIE.

The gravitation of character is naturally toward its weakest point.
Margaret's weakest point was an intense, though unconscious,
selfishness. Jan's restless craving for change and excitement made him
dissatisfied with the daily routine of life, lazy, and often
unreasonable. His very blessings became offenses to him. His clean,
well-ordered house, made him fly to the noisy freedom of Ragon Torr's
kitchen. Margaret's never-ceasing industry, her calmness, neatness and
deliberation, exasperated him as a red cloth does a bull.

Suneva Torr had married Paul Glumm, and Jan often watched her as he
sat drinking his ale in Torr's kitchen. At home, it is true, she
tormented Glumm with her contrary, provoking moods; but then, again,
she met him with smiles and endearments that atoned for every thing.
Jan thought it would be a great relief if Margaret were only angry
sometimes. For he wearied of her constant serenity, as people weary of
sunshine without cloud or shadow.

And Margaret suffered. No one could doubt that who watched her face
from day to day. She made no complaint, not even to her mother. Thora,
however, perceived it all. She had foreseen and foretold the trouble,
but she was too noble a woman to point out the fulfillment of her
prophecy. As she went about her daily work, she considered, and not
unkindly, the best means for bringing Jan back to his wife and home,
and his first pride in them.

She believed that the sea only could do it. After all, her heart was
with the men who loved it. She