r children mended her
health or the fatality of the shock was overestimated, for she did not
die, not then nor for many years, but lived, happier, perhaps in her
affliction than before it, for the bond between her and Roger and
Mother Mary, strengthened when she was preparing for death, never
loosened again, and more than once, a black-robed, white-coiffed
figure has visited the home of her father's like a slim shadow, and
carried with her one of the Church's greatest blessings, surely--the
healing of old wounds and the restoring of human loves.

PART NINE

IN WHICH THE RIVER FINDS THE SEA

Like a white snake upon the sands
She's writhing in the crispy foam,
She holds her soul in her open hands,
And now she staggers and now she stands,
And now she runs to her husband's home!

O I have seen a wife at rest,
That croons the babe upon her knee,
She lies upon her goodman's breast
As gentle as a bird at nest,
The mermaid's saved her soul from Sea!

_Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden._

CHAPTER XXX

A TERROR IN THE SNOW

Well, they stayed the month nearly out, and then Roger took a fancy to
see the Island in winter, and I, hugging to my breast the
consciousness of that furnace, was easily persuaded to go with them:
it is January, February and March that punish me so fearfully in the
North, and really only the last two of those. I had thought Margarita
a little _distraite_ and cold to us all, toward the last, and feared
she was resenting her exile: she took a short trip to New York,
accompanied, of course, by the faithful Jencks, and I had visions of
American contracts, but Roger never mentioned the subject--didn't even
ask her why she went, I believe, she hated to be questioned so.

We found everything in first-rate order (I had written ahead to light
the furnace) and you should have seen Roger's face when he noticed the
registers in the big room! Like a boy's when some good-natured trick
has been played upon him. Suppose we had not had them nor the coal--it
makes me cold now to think of it.

I find I can't write about it very fully, after all, and I must be
forgiven if I cut it short. It's a little too near, yet, after all the
years. I know I never want to see snow again--it is the most cruel
blue-white in the world.

We stopped the night, of course, and in the morning Roger and
Margarita went for a walk on the crust, for it had snowed all night
and t