these things, David; I cannot think of them.
What I want is some word of comfort about Vala--a little word from
beyond would make all the difference. _Why_ is it not given? _Why_
is there no answering voice from the other side? There is none on
this. _Why_ does God pursue a poor, broken-hearted woman so hardly?
Even now, when I have wept my heart cold and dumb, I do not please
him. One thing only is sure--my misery. Oh, _why, why_, David?"

And David could only drop his eyes before the sad, inquiring gaze of
Nanna's. He murmured something about Adam and the cross, and told her
sorrowfully that He who hung upon it, forsaken, in the dark, also
asked, "Why?" The austerity and profound mystery of his creed gave
him no more comforting answer to the pathetic inquiry.

He spent the day in the little hamlet, and, the weather being dry and
not very cold, he persuaded Nanna to take a walk upon the cliff-top
with him. She agreed because she had not the strength to oppose
his desire; but if David had had any experience with suffering
women, he would have seen at once how ineffectual his effort would
be. The gray, icy, indifferent sea had nothing hopeful to say to
her. The gray gulls, with their stern, cold eyes, watchful and
hungry, filled her ears with nothing but painful clamoring. There
was no voice in nature to cry, "Comfort," to a bruised soul.

She said the wind hurt her, that she was tired, that she would rather
sit still in the house and shut her eyes and think of Vala. She
leaned so heavily on him that David was suddenly afraid, and he
looked with more scrutiny into her face. If his eyes had been opened
he would have seen over its youth and beauty signs of a hand that
writes but once; for when despair assumes the dignity of patience
it carries with it the warrant of death.

They went slowly and silently back to the house, and as they
approached it David said, "Some one has called, for the door is
open." And they walked a little faster, so that Nanna's cheeks
flushed with the movement and the wind.

Matilda Sabiston sat on the hearthstone grumbling at the cold,
while the man-servant who had brought her so far was piling the peats
upon the fire to warm her feet and hands. When David and Nanna
entered she did not move, but she turned her eyes upon them with a
malignant anger that roused in both a temper very different from
that in which their hopeless walk had been taken. It was immediately
noticeable in Nanna. She drop