her darling, as he was at this very moment, that is, what was
left him! If only the much-implored Virgin, or some other power, would
do her the blessing to show her, by second-sight, her beloved! either
living and working hard to return a rich man, or else as a corpse,
surrendered by the sea, so that she might at least know a certainty.

Sometimes she was seized with the thought of a ship appearing suddenly
upon the horizon; the _Leopoldine_ hastening home. Then she would
suddenly make an irreflected movement to rise, and rush to look out at
the ocean, to see whether it were true.

But she would fall back. Alas! where was this _Leopoldine_ now? Where
could she be? Out afar, at that awful distance of Iceland, forsaken,
crushed, and lost.

All ended by a never-fading vision appearing to her--an empty,
sea-tossed wreck, slowly and gently rocked by the silent gray and
rose-streaked sea; almost with soft mockery, in the midst of the vast
calm of deadened waters.

CHAPTER VIII--THE FALSE ALARM

Two o'clock in the morning.

It was at night, especially, that she kept attentive to approaching
footsteps; at the slightest rumour or unaccustomed noise her temples
vibrated; by dint of being strained to outward things, they had become
fearfully sensitive.

Two o'clock in the morning. On this night as on others, with her hands
clasped and her eyes wide open in the dark, she listened to the wind,
sweeping in never-ending tumult over the heath.

Suddenly a man's footsteps hurried along the path! At this hour who
would pass now? She drew herself up, stirred to the very soul, her heart
ceasing to beat.

Some one stopped before the door, and came up the small stone steps.

He!--O God!--he! Some one had knocked--it could be no other than he! She
was up now, barefooted; she, so feeble for the last few days, had sprung
up as nimbly as a kitten, with her arms outstretched to wind round her
darling. Of course the _Leopoldine_ had arrived at night, and anchored
in Pors-Even Bay, and he had rushed home; she arranged all this in her
mind with the swiftness of lightning. She tore the flesh off her fingers
in her excitement to draw the bolt, which had stuck.

"Eh?"

She slowly moved backward, as if crushed, her head falling on her bosom.
Her beautiful insane dream was over. She just could grasp that it was
not her husband, her Yann, and that nothing of him, substantial or
spiritual, had passed through the air; she felt plunged ag