t length
prevailed upon her to enter her home. She cursed the land that had borne
him, the hamlet wherein he had dwelt; and her mother, not amazed at her
fierce grief, found each convulsive ebullition of sorrow natural to the
dark hour, and soothed her as best she could. Then the elder woman
departed a while, not knowing the truth and feeling such a course
embraced the deeper wisdom.

Left alone, her future rose before Chris, as she sat upon her bed and
saw the time to come glimmer out of the night in colours more ashy than
the moonbeams on the cotton blind. Yet, as she looked her face burned,
and one flame, vivid enough, flickered through all the future; the light
on her own cheeks. Her position as it faced her from various points of
view acted upon her physical being--suffocated her and brought a scream
to her lips. There was nobody to hear it, nobody to see the girl tear
her hair, rise from her couch, fall quivering, face downward, on the
little strip of carpet beside her bed. Who could know even a little of
what this meant to her? Women had often lost the men they loved, but
never, never like this. So she assured herself. Past sorrows and fears
dwindled to mere shadows now; for the awful future--the crushing months
to come, rose grim and horrible on the horizon of Time, laden with
greater terrors than she could face and live.

Alone, Chris told herself she might have withstood the oncoming
tribulation--struggled through the storms of suffering and kept her
broken heart company as other women had done before and must again; but
she would not be alone. A little hand was stretching out of the
loneliness she yearned for; a little voice was crying out of the
solitude she craved. The shadows that might have sheltered her were full
of hard eyes; the secret places would only echo a world's cruel laughter
now--that world which had let her loved one die uncared for, that world
so pitiless to such as she. Her thoughts were alternately defiant and
fearful; then, before the picture of her mother and Will, her emotions
dwindled from the tragic and became of a sort that weeping could
relieve. Tears, now mercifully released from their fountains, softened
her bruised soul for a time and moderated the physical strain of her
agony. She lay long, half-naked, sobbing her heart out. Then came the
mad desire to be back with Clement at any cost, and profound pity for
him overwhelmed her mind to the exclusion of further sorrow for herself.