eavy upon her--night after night, through
long distances of Time and Space. Oh! the fancied clinging of
infant-lips!--the thrilling touch of little ghostly hands!--those
phantom-caresses that torture mothers' hearts! ... Night after night,
through many a month of pain. Then for a time the gentle presence
ceased to haunt her,--seemed to have lain down to sleep forever under
the high bright grass and yellow flowers. Why did it return, that
night of all nights, to kiss her, to cling to her, to nestle in her
arms?

For in her dream she thought herself still kneeling before the waxen
Image, while the terrors of the tempest were ever deepening about
her,--raving of winds and booming of waters and a shaking of the land.
And before her, even as she prayed her dream-prayer, the waxen Virgin
became tall as a woman, and taller,--rising to the roof and smiling as
she grew. Then Carmen would have cried out for fear, but that
something smothered her voice,--paralyzed her tongue. And the Virgin
silently stooped above her, and placed in her arms the Child,--the
brown Child with the Indian face. And the Child whitened in her hands
and changed,--seeming as it changed to send a sharp pain through her
heart: an old pain linked somehow with memories of bright windy
Spanish hills, and summer scent of olive groves, and all the luminous
Past;--it looked into her face with the soft dark gaze, with the
unforgotten smile of ... dead Conchita!

And Carmen wished to thank; the smiling Virgin for that priceless
bliss, and lifted up her eyes, but the sickness of ghostly fear
returned upon her when she looked; for now the Mother seemed as a woman
long dead, and the smile was the smile of fleshlessness, and the places
of the eyes were voids and darknesses ... And the sea sent up so vast a
roar that the dwelling rocked.

Carmen started from sleep to find her heart throbbing so that the couch
shook with it. Night was growing gray; the door had just been opened
and slammed again. Through the rain-whipped panes she discerned the
passing shape of Feliu, making for the beach--a broad and bearded
silhouette, bending against the wind. Still the waxen Virgin smiled
her Mexican smile,--but now she was only seven inches high; and her
bead-glass eyes seemed to twinkle with kindliness while the flame of
the last expiring taper struggled for life in the earthen socket at her
feet.

III.

Rain and a blind sky and a bursting sea Feliu and his men, M