the wind's sorrow," the lullaby Hannaford had desired for his ashes was
sung under the rock where, already, his urn was enshrined.

At dawn the wild wailing ceased suddenly, as if the wind had drowned
itself in the ocean; and Mary went out on to her balcony, in the dead
silence which was like peace after war. The hollow bell of the sky,
swept clear of clouds by the steel broom of the mistral, blazed with
blue fire, and the sea was so crystal pure that it seemed one might look
down through violet depths into the caves of the mer-people. The still
air was very cold; and it seemed to Mary that if the joy of life were
not exhausted for her, she might have felt excited and exuberantly
happy, alone with the lovely miracle of this new day. As it was, she
felt curiously calm, almost resigned to the thought that her heart, like
a clock, had run down at the last hour of its happiness. She said to
herself that Nemesis had brought her to this house, and there made her
lay down her hopes of love. She had accepted much from Captain
Hannaford, and had thought of him hardly at all. Now, it was almost as
if she were offering this sacrifice to him. "It is Destiny," she said,
as Eve Dauntrey had said a few hours ago.

The tired sea had gone to sleep, and was breathing deeply in its dreams,
but to Mary it was not the same happy sea that she had looked out upon
from her window at Rose Winter's, and at the Villa Mirasole. The little
mumbling, baby mouths of the breathing waves bit toothlessly upon the
rocks. Mary pitied the faintly heaving swells because they were to her
fancy like wretched drowning animals, trying vainly forever to crawl up
on land, and forever falling back.

"When I am in the convent, if Reverend Mother will take me in, I shall
never look at the sea again," she thought, "yet I shall always hear it
in my heart, remembering last night and to-day. After this I shall be
only a hollow shell full of memories, as a shell is full of the voice of
the sea."

Lady Dauntrey dared not let her husband take Mary's letters to the post
until she had steamed the envelopes, and read what the girl had to say.
If she had herself dictated those farewell words to Prince Vanno, they
could not have suited her better; and there was nothing objectionable in
the appeal to Reverend Mother at the Scotch convent. Only, perhaps it
would be as well to keep back that letter for a day or two. The one to
Vanno Lord Dauntrey carried with him to Monte Carl