Ivar turned the mare and urged her into a sliding trot. Her feet
sent back a continual spatter of mud.

Alexandra spoke to the old man as they jogged along through the
sullen gray twilight of the storm. "Ivar, I think it has done me
good to get cold clear through like this, once. I don't believe
I shall suffer so much any more. When you get so near the dead,
they seem more real than the living. Worldly thoughts leave one.
Ever since Emil died, I've suffered so when it rained. Now that
I've been out in it with him, I shan't dread it. After you once
get cold clear through, the feeling of the rain on you is sweet.
It seems to bring back feelings you had when you were a baby. It
carries you back into the dark, before you were born; you can't
see things, but they come to you, somehow, and you know them and
aren't afraid of them. Maybe it's like that with the dead. If
they feel anything at all, it's the old things, before they were
born, that comfort people like the feeling of their own bed does
when they are little."

"Mistress," said Ivar reproachfully, "those are bad thoughts. The
dead are in Paradise."

Then he hung his head, for he did not believe that Emil was in
Paradise.

When they got home, Signa had a fire burning in the sitting-room
stove. She undressed Alexandra and gave her a hot footbath, while
Ivar made ginger tea in the kitchen. When Alexandra was in bed,
wrapped in hot blankets, Ivar came in with his tea and saw that
she drank it. Signa asked permission to sleep on the slat lounge
outside her door. Alexandra endured their attentions patiently,
but she was glad when they put out the lamp and left her. As she
lay alone in the dark, it occurred to her for the first time that
perhaps she was actually tired of life. All the physical operations
of life seemed difficult and painful. She longed to be free from
her own body, which ached and was so heavy. And longing itself
was heavy: she yearned to be free of that.

As she lay with her eyes closed, she had again, more vividly than
for many years, the old illusion of her girlhood, of being lifted
and carried lightly by some one very strong. He was with her
a long while this time, and carried her very far, and in his arms
she felt free from pain. When he laid her down on her bed again,
she opened her eyes, and, for the first time in her life, she saw
him, saw him clearly, though the room was dark, and his face was
covered. He was standing in the doorway of her