d bitterly at him, saying black was the day she had
set eyes on him, and black the day she married him, and her face was
twisted into agonized ugliness. And when he went to sea a few days later
he had found a symbol of her religion, an _Agnus Dei_, sewed into his
coat to protect him against the terrors of the deep waters.

And she had died, poor tortured Moyra, suddenly. Why? Had What had
fashioned her thought: That's not rightly done? No. That's poor. Wait.
I'll do it over....

Ah, well, God give her peace, wherever she wandered! How many years had
it taken to get over, not her death, but their being married? A long
time. Seven bitter years. He might have turned into a bitter, fierce old
man, hating all things. The whole thing had been like a cruelty to a
happy wondering child. And he had closed his heart, resentful,
afraid.... And then had come Claire-Anne.

Once he had been a child with wondering gray eyes, and life had made him
blind as a mole, secretive as a badger, timid of the world as the owl is
timid of daylight. The shock of Claire-Anne, and he was cognizant of
great enveloping currents of life. Wonder he had known, and bitterness
he had known, but the immense forces that wind the stars as a clock is
wound he had not known.... And with Claire-Anne they had burst about him
like thunder. They had played around him as the corposant flickers
around the mast-head of a ship.... Poor Claire-Anne! The miracle of her.
She was like some flowering bush in an arctic waste.... Her wonderful
scared eyes, her tortured self.... It was a very strange thing that her
end did not bother him.... A gesture of youth, that sudden snap of the
wrist with the poor dead prince's dagger.... He had been very honest
about it, and it did not bother him, any more than it would have been on
his conscience to have shot a crippled horse.... Once it had seemed to
him unnecessarily histrionic, but now he knew it was merciful.... Her
spirit had gone too far ever to return to normal life....

But the little woman of the East, that did bother him. In boyhood he had
known the wonder of life. In youth he had known there existed sordid
tragedy. In young manhood passion had crashed like lightning.... And
then he had thought he knew all. He had considered himself the master of
life and said: "I will do such and such a thing and be happy. Enjoy
this, because I know how to enjoy it. To the wise man, all is a
pleasant hedonism." It struck, him at the time