nce, and weltered with the
tide according to the joint ordering of earth and moon. The living
creature would not acknowledge that right dominion, most desperately
would withstand it. She stooped her shoulder beneath the low head, and
heaved it up above the tide: the air did but insist that it lay
dead-still. With all her slender feminine strength put out for speed, she
girthed, she held, she upbore the inert weight afloat for moonlighted
shallows. There her knee up-staying, her frantic hands prevailing over
the prone figure, the dead face fell revealed. No hope could appeal
against that witness.

A strange grey had replaced the ruddy tan of life, darker than the usual
pallor of the dead. That, and the slack jaw, and the fixed, half-shut
eyes, a new and terrible aspect gave to the head, dear and sacred above
all on earth to the stricken creature beholding.

For a long moment appalled she gazed, knowing yet but one fathom of her
misery: just her loss, her mere great loss past repair. Then moaning
feebly, her arms went round again to draw it close. Her smooth palms
gliding over the body told of flawed surfaces, bidding her eyes leave the
face to read new scores: on the breast a deep rent, on the shoulder
another, and further more and more wherever a hand went. Along one arm
she stretched hers, and lifted it up to the light of the moon. Beside the
tense, slender limb, gleaming white, that other showed massive, inert,
grey-hued, with darker breaks. The hand hanging heavy was a dark horror
to see.

Shadows invaded, for the moon was foundering on the rocks.

Across her shoulders she drew the heavy burden, strove to rise upright to
bear it, tottered, fell, and then dragged on with elbows and knees as the
waves resigned to her the full load. Heavy knees furrowed the sand beside
hers, heavy arms trailed; the awful, cold face drooped and swayed from
her shoulder as she moved; now and again it touched her cheek.

Withdrawn from the fatal sea, what gain had she? The last spark of life
was long extinct, and she knew it; yet a folly very human set her
seeking Christian's self in the shell that was left, scanning it,
handling it, calling upon deaf ears, drawing the wet head against her
breast. Cold, cold was her breast; the sea-magic had bred out all heat
from her heart.

She pressed the dripping hair; she stooped and kissed her dead lover on
the lips. It was then her iniquity struck home with merciless rigour
complete. 'I will