liff, wringing her
hands toward the declining sun. In the midst of that wild
golden-burning desolation, Annadoah felt her utter loneliness, her
tragic helplessness. In all the universe she felt herself utterly
alone.

Far away, awed by the heroism, the very splendor of the bravery of the
man who had perished, the tribe stood murmuring. In their hearts was
no little unkindness toward Annadoah. But, forsaken, outcast, she did
not care.

Over the aureate shimmering seas she wrung her little hands and into
the waves lapping at her feet her tears fell like rain. For the heart
of Annadoah ached. Nothing in the world any more mattered. All that
she had loved had perished in the sea. And she loved too late.

Gazing at the low-lying sun, veiled as in a vapor of tears, remote, and
sadly golden in its self-destined isolation, an instinctive
wild-world-understanding of that tragedy of all life, of all the
universe perchance--of that unselfish love that is too often denied and
the unhappy love that accents only too late--vaguely filled her
primitive heart.

Sinking to her knees, convulsed sobs shaking her, she wrung her hands
toward the sun, the eternal maiden _Sukh-eh-nukh_, the beautiful, the
all-desired.

"_I-o-h-h-h_!" she moaned, and her voice sobbed its pathos over the
seas. "_I-o-h-h-h! I-o-h-h-h! I-o-h-h-h, Sukh-eh-nukh! I-o-o-h-h,
Sukh-eh-nukh_! Unhappy sun--unhappy sun! _I-o-o-h-h-h-h_, Annadoah!
_I-o-o-o-h-h-h-h_, Annadoah! Unhappy, unhappy Annadoah!"

Annadoah's head sank lower and lower. Her weeping voice melted in the
melancholy sobbing of the aureate sea. One by one the natives
departed. She was left alone. To the north the sky darkened with one
of those sudden arctic storms which come, as in a moment's space, and
blast the tender flowers of spring. A cold wind moaned a pitiless
lament from the interior mountains. Yellow vapors gathered about the
dimming sun. Ominous shadows took form on the shimmering sea.

"_I-o-h-h-h--iooh_! Unhappy sun--unhappy, unhappy Annadoah!"

Taking fire in the subdued sunlight--and descending from heaven like a
gentle benediction of feathery flakes of gold--over and about the dark,
crouched figure, softly . . . very softly . . . the snow began to fall.

[1] Annadoah's flight, extraordinary as it is, is not without even more
remarkable precedents. In one case a woman who had been rejected by
her husband made a forty-mile journey during winter to a spot