. God was in His Heaven, and the world, His footstool, bore the
visible impress of His Feet. And it seemed to Lynette, who had learned to
see the faces of Christ and of His Mother Mary through the lineaments of
the earthly face that had first looked love upon herself in her terrible
abandonment, that those Divine and glorious countenances looked down on
her and smiled. And her chilled faith spread quivering wings, basking in
their ineffable mild radiance as the little blue and tortoiseshell
butterflies basked in the glorious sunshine that had followed the
morning's storm.

The tangible presence seemed to move beside her, through the white powdery
sand. Over the knotted grasses, between the tufts of poppies and the
prickly little yellow roses that fringed the hollows, the garments of
another seemed to sweep beside her own. The folds of a thin veil upborne
on the elastic breeze fluttered beside her cheek, blew against her lips,
bringing the rare delicate fragrance--the familiar perfume that clung to
everything the Mother habitually wore and used and touched. She did not
look round, or stretch out her hand. She walked along, drinking in
blissfulness and companionship at every pore of her thirsty soul, joyfully
realising that this would last; that by-and-by the great void of
loneliness would not close in on her again.

Only the night before, upon the brink of the supreme discovery that the
dead in Christ are not only living in Him, but for us also who are His,
she had hesitated and doubted. Before the sunrise of this glorious day she
had learned to doubt no more.

* * * * *

She had been restless and unhappy. Saxham had not written for a week. She
bitterly missed the short, cold, kind letters in the clear, small, firm
handwriting, that had reached her at intervals of three days, to be
answered by her constrained and timid notes, hoping that he was well and
not overworking, describing the place and her pleasure in it, without
mention of her loneliness; giving details of Major Wrynche's progress
towards recovery, and left-handed attempts at golf, winding up with
messages from Lady Hannah and dutiful remembrances from Tafydd and
Janellan, and signed, his affectionate wife, Lynette Saxham.

Trite and laboured and schoolgirlish enough those epistles seemed to their
writer. To Saxham they were drops of rain upon the parching soil of his
heart, the one good that life had for him in this final lap