ate, she must fly on through the gloom till it
end. Unluckily all her thoughts brought her back to Hazard. Even this
sense of resembling a bird that flies, it knows not where, recalled to
her the sonnet of Petrarch which she had once translated for him, and
which, since then, had been always on his lips, although she had never
dreamed that it could have such meaning to her. Long after she had
established herself in her berth, solitary and wakeful, the verses made
rhythm with the beat of the car-wheels:

"Vago augelletto che cantando vai!"

They were already far on their way, flying up the frozen stream of the
Hudson, before she was left alone with her thoughts in the noisy quiet
of the rushing train. She could not even hope to sleep. Propping herself
up against the pillows, she raised the curtain of her window and stared
into the black void outside. Nothing in nature could be more mysterious
and melancholy than this dark, polar world, beside which a winter storm
on the Atlantic was at least exciting. On the ocean the forces of nature
have it their own way; nothing comes between man and the elements; but
as Esther gazed out into the night, it was not the darkness, or the
sense of cold, or the vagrant snow-flakes driving against the window,
or the heavy clouds drifting through the sky, or even the ghastly
glimmer and reflection of the snow-fields, that, by contrast, made the
grave seem cheerful; it was rather the twinkling lights from distant and
invisible farm-houses, the vague outlines of barn-yards and fences along
doubtful roads, the sudden flash of lamps as the train hurried through
unknown stations, or the unfamiliar places where it stopped, while the
tap-tap of the train-men's hammers on the wheels beneath sounded like
spirit-rappings. These signs of life behind the veil were like the
steady lights of shore to the drowning fisherman off the reef outside.
Every common-place kerosene lamp whose rays struggled from distant,
snow-clad farms, brought a picture of peace and hope to Esther. Not one
of these invisible roofs but might shelter some realized romance, some
contented love. In so dark and dreary a world, what a mad act it was to
fly from the only happiness life offered! What a strange idea to seek
safety by refusing the only protection worth having! Love was all in
all! Esther had never before felt herself so helpless as in the face of
this outer darkness, and if her lover had now been there to claim her,
s