d women, once at least,
when they read the past in the light of the present, with the reasons of
things, like unobserved finger-posts, protruding where they never saw
them before. The journey behind them is mapped out and figured, with its
false steps, its wrong observations, all its infatuated, deluded
geography. They understand as Olive understood, but it is probable that
they rarely suffer as she suffered. The sense of regret for her baffled
calculations burned within her like a fire, and the splendour of the
vision over which the curtain of mourning now was dropped brought to her
eyes slow, still tears, tears that came one by one, neither easing her
nerves nor lightening her load of pain. She thought of her innumerable
talks with Verena, of the pledges they had exchanged, of their earnest
studies, their faithful work, their certain reward, the winter nights
under the lamp, when they thrilled with previsions as just and a passion
as high as had ever found shelter in a pair of human hearts. The pity of
it, the misery of such a fall after such a flight, could express itself
only, as the poor girl prolonged the vague pauses of her unnoticed
ramble, in a low, inarticulate murmur of anguish.

The afternoon waned, bringing with it the slight chill which, at the
summer's end, begins to mark the shortening days. She turned her face
homeward, and by this time became conscious that if Verena's companion
had not yet brought her back there might be ground for uneasiness as to
what had happened to them. It seemed to her that no sail-boat could have
put into the town without passing more or less before her eyes and
showing her whom it carried; she had seen a dozen, freighted only with
the figures of men. An accident was perfectly possible (what could
Ransom, with his plantation habits, know about the management of a
sail?), and once that danger loomed before her--the signal loveliness of
the weather had prevented its striking her before--Olive's imagination
hurried, with a bound, to the worst. She saw the boat overturned and
drifting out to sea, and (after a week of nameless horror) the body of
an unknown young woman, defaced beyond recognition, but with long auburn
hair and in a white dress, washed up in some far-away cove. An hour
before, her mind had rested with a sort of relief on the idea that
Verena should sink for ever beneath the horizon, so that their
tremendous trouble might never be; but now, with the lateness of the
ho