wind rushed
by, waving the foliage on either hand; a steady storm of sand and
gravel rained rattling through the bushes as the spurred horse
bounded forward, breaking into a grander stride, thundering on
through the gathering dusk.

Swaying, cradled in his embrace, her lips murmured his name, or,
parted breathless, touched his, as the exquisitely confused sense
of headlong speed dimmed her senses to a happy madness.

Trees, bushes, fences flew past and fled away behind in the dusk.
It seemed to her as though she was being tossed through space
locked in his arms; infinite depths of shadow whirled and eddied
around her; limitless reaches, vistas unfathomable stretched toward
outer chaos into which they were hurled, unseeing, her arms around
his neck, her soft face on his breast.

Then a lantern flashed; voices sounded in far-off confusion; more
lanterns twinkled and glimmered; more voices broke in on their
heavenly isolation.

Was the divine flight ended?

Somebody said: "Colonel Arran is here, and is still alive, but his
mind is clouding. He says he is waiting for his son to come."

Dizzy, burning hot, half blinded, she felt herself swung out of
space onto the earth again, through a glare of brightness in which
Celia's face seemed to be framed, edged with infernal light. . . .
And another face, Camilla's, was there in the confusing brilliancy;
and she reeled a little, embraced, held hot and close; and in her
dulled ears drummed Celia's voice, murmuring, pitying, complaining,
adoring:

"Honey-bell--Oh, my little Honey-bud! I have you back in my a'ms,
and I have my boy, and I'm ve'y thankful to my Heavenly Master--I
certainly am, Honey-bee!--fo' His goodness and His mercy which He
is showing eve'y day to me and mine."

And Camilla's pale face was pressed against her hot cheeks and the
girl's black sleeve of crape encircled her neck.

She whispered: "I--I try to think it reconciles me to losing Jimmy.
. . . War gave me Stephen. . . . Yet--oh, I cannot understand why
God's way must sometimes be the way of battle!"

Ailsa saw and heard and understood, yet, all around her fell an
unreal light--a terrible fiery radiance, making voices the voices,
of phantoms, forms the outlines of ghosts.

Through an open door she saw a lamp-lit room where her lover knelt
beside a bed--saw a man's arm reach feebly toward him--and saw no
more. Everything wavered and dazzled and brightened into rainbow
tints around her, then