e hoarse, animal laughter of men, the shrill, inane giggles
of women. Day and night the game went on without abatement, the game of
despoliation.

And I was on the verge of the vortex. Memories of Glengyle, the laughing
of the silver-scaled sea, the tawny fisher-lads with their honest eyes,
the herring glittering like jewels in the brown nets, the women with
their round health-hued cheeks and motherly eyes. Oh, Home, with your
peace and rest and content, can you not save me from this?

And as I stood there wretchedly a timid little hand touched my arm.

CHAPTER V

It is odd how people who have been parted a weary while, yet who have
thought of each other constantly, will often meet with as little show of
feeling as if they had but yesterday bid good-bye. I looked at her and
she at me, and I don't think either of us betrayed any emotion. Yet must
we both have been infinitely moved.

She was changed, desperately, pitifully changed. All the old sweetness
was there, that pathetic sweetness which had made the miners call her
the Madonna; but alas, forever gone from her was the fragrant flower of
girlhood. Her pallor was excessive, and the softness had vanished out of
her face, leaving there only lines of suffering. Sorrow had kindled in
her grey eyes a spiritual lustre, a shining, tearless brightness. Ah me,
sad, sad, indeed, was the change in her!

So she looked at me, a long and level look in which I could see neither
love nor hate. The bright, grey eyes were clear and steady, and the
pinched and pitiful lips did not quiver. And as I gazed on her I felt
that nothing ever would be the same again. Love could no more be the
radiant spirit of old, the prompter of impassioned words, the painter of
bewitching scenes. Never again could we feel the world recede from us as
we poised on bright wings of fancy; never again compare our joy with
that of the heaven-born; never again welcome that pure ideal that comes
to youth alone, and that pitifully dies in the disenchantment of graver
days. We could sacrifice all things for each other; joy and grieve for
each other; live and die for each other,--but the Hope, the Dream, the
exaltation of love's dawn, the peerless white glory of it--had gone from
us forever and forever.

Her lips moved:

"How you have changed!"

"Yes, Berna, I have been ill. But you, you too have changed."

"Yes," she said very slowly. "I have been--dead."

There was no faltering in her voice, neve