d not leave her:

"Of once sown seed, who knoweth what the crop is?
Alas, my love, Love's eyes are very blind!
What would they have us do? Sunflowers and poppies
Stoop to the wind----"[*]

[*] Oliver Madox Brown.

Yes, yes, Love's eyes are very blind, but in their blindness there was
more light than in all other earthly things. Oh, she could not live for
him, and with him--it was denied to her--but she still could die for
him, her darling, her darling!

"Geoffrey, hear me--I die for you; accept my sacrifice, and forget me
not." So!--she is in the rollers--how solemn they are with their hoary
heads of foam, as one by one they move down upon her.

The first! it towers high, but the canoe rides it like a cork. Look! the
day is dying on the distant land, but still his glory shines across the
sea. Presently all will be finished. Here the breeze is strong; it tears
the bonnet from her head, it unwinds the coronet of braided locks,
and her bright hair streams out behind her. Feel how the spray stings,
striking like a whip. No, not this wave, she rides that also; she
will die as she has lived--fighting to the last; and once more, never
faltering, she sets her face towards the rollers and consigns her soul
to doom.

Ah! that struck her full. Oh, see! Geoffrey's ring has slipped from her
wet hand, falling into the bottom of the boat. Can she regain it? she
would die with that ring upon her finger--it is her marriage-ring,
wedding her through death to Geoffrey, upon the altar of the sea. She
stoops! oh, what a shock of water at her breast! What was it--what was
it?--_Of once sown seed, who knoweth what the crop is?_ She must soon
learn now!

"Geoffrey! hear me, Geoffrey!--I die, I die for you! I will wait for you
at the foundations of the sea, on the topmost heights of heaven, in the
lowest deeps of hell--wherever I am I will always wait for you!"

It sinks--it has sunk--she is alone with God, and the cruel waters.
The sun goes out! Look on that great white wave seething through the
deepening gloom; hear it rushing towards her, big with fate.

"Geoffrey, my darling--I will wait----"

Farewell to Beatrice! The light went out of the sky and darkness
gathered on the weltering sea. Farewell to Beatrice, and all her love
and all her sin.

CHAPTER XXIX

A WOMAN'S LAST WORD

Geoffrey came down to breakfast about eleven o'clock on the morning of
that day the first hours of which he ha