shrines. O woe to part from it, to
lay it aside and leave it to final obliteration!

Suddenly she wept. This near, definite distress, so humanly common, broke
up the fountain of her tears so many a year sealed. To a creature long of
the cold sea breeding tears were scalding to the heart.

Moaning, weeping, yet a little while she failed to forgo that embrace of
pure worship and untainted love. Worthy of reverence that piece of clay
was, for its loyal alliance with a high soul; wonderful as a noble and
true representative; very sacred from the record of devotion scored
deep, so fatally deep.

She wept, she wept as though weeping could cease from her never. Could
the deep draught of sea-magic in tears be distilled, void of it should
she be long before daybreak come.

The shallowing run of the tide drove her to resign the dead weight that
exceeded her strength to uphold. Weeping, heartwrung, she bent her to
replace her own will by Christian's! So first she gave away the dead body
to final peace, and laid it down for ever in its destined sepulchre, and
thereafter went alone into unfamiliar darkness to grope blind among
strange worlds for the ways of Christian's countenance.

We beseech, we beseech, we beseech: Lord God for my unbaptized! Dear
Christ for Christian's Diadyomene! Blessed Trinity and all Saints for a
nameless soul in sore need!

CHAPTER XVII

Some four days after Rhoda heard what more befell before that night was
out. The chief monitress told her.

'We were watching all,' she said, 'and praying according to that promise
I had made for a nameless soul in sore need, whose name, Diadyomene, you
have restored to us. The dull roar of the sea came in swells of sound,
filled as often with an illusion of voices; angry voices they sounded
then. This I say that you may understand how a cry like a human creature
in distress could pass unregarded at first. Again and again it came more
distinctly, till we were startled into suspicion that a feeble knocking
was close by at the lych door of our chapel. One went at my bidding to
look out. Back she fled, with terror white as death: "God and His saints
guard," she said, "that without is not of flesh and blood!"

'I and another took her light and went to the door, and before unclosing
I asked in the name of God who was there. No answer came but a sound of
bitter sobbing. Then I looked out, and verily doubted also if what I
looked on were indeed flesh and blood. U