house was marked and isolated, and she sat down to
watch her dying child.

VIII

THE JUSTIFICATION OF DEATH

During the awful days of Vala's dying no one came near Nanna.
She watched her child night and day, and saw it go out into the
darkness that girds our life around, in unutterable desolation of
soul. From the first Vala was unconscious, and she went away without
a word or token of comfort to the despairing mother. There was
unspeakable suffering and decay, and then the little breathing-house
in which Vala had sojourned a short space was suddenly vacant. For
a moment Nanna stood on the border-lands of being, where life
hardly draws breath. _A little more_, and she would have pushed
apart the curtains that divide us from that spiritual world which
lies so close and which may claim us at any moment. _A little
more_, and she would, in her loving agony, have pressed beyond
manifestations to that which is ineffable and nameless.

But at the last moment the flesh-and-blood conductor of spirit
failed; a great weakness and weariness made her passive under the
storm of sorrow that drove like rain to the roots of her life.
When she was able to move, Vala lay sad and still. All was over,
and Nanna stood astonished, smitten, dismayed, on a threshold she
could not pass. The Eternal had given, and it was a gift; he had
taken away, and it was an immeasurable loss, and she could not
say, "Blessed be the name of the Lord." She was utterly desolate;
and when she washed for the last time the little feet that had
never trod the moor or street or house, she thought her heart
would break. _Who_ had led them through the vast spaces of the
constellations? _Whither_ had they been led? There was no answer to
her moaning question. She looked from her dead Vala to God, and all
was darkness. She could not see him.

It was a hurried burial in a driving storm. The sea rolled in
fateful billows, the winds whistled loud and shrill, the rain
soaked Nanna through and through. Two or three of her neighbors
followed afar off; they wished her to see they were not oblivious
of her grief and loss, but they dared not break the ordinance of
town and kirk and voluntarily and without urgent reason come in
contact with the contagion; for the island not many years previously
had been almost decimated by the same scourge, and every man and
woman was the guardian, not only of his or her own life, but of
the lives of the community.

Nanna underst