ever else she surrendered, she could not yield to him in this.
She could not, she would not, leave Guy to sink while there
remained the smallest chance of saving him.

So she told herself, lying there alone, while the thunder rolled
now near, now far, like a menacing monster wandering hither and
thither in search of prey. Earlier in the night she had tried to
pray, but it had brought her no relief. She had not really prayed
since that terrible journey to Brennerstadt when she had poured out
her whole soul in supplication and had met only failure. She felt
in a fashion cut off, forgotten in this land of strangers. The
very effort to bridge the gulf seemed but to emphasize her utter
impotence. She had come to that barren part of the way where even
the most hopeful traveller sometimes feels that God has forgotten
to be gracious. She had never felt more alone in all her life, and
it was a loneliness that frightened her.

Weirdly the lightning played about her bed. She watched it with
eyes that would not close. She wondered if Burke were watching it
also, and shivered with the thought of the morrow, asking herself
for the first time why she had ever consented to marry him, why she
had not rather shouldered her fate and gone back to her father.
She would have found work in England. He would have helped her if
she had only had the courage to return, the strength to be humble.
Her thoughts lingered tenderly about him. They had been so much to
each other once. Did he ever regret her? Did he ever wish her
back?

A burning lump rose in her throat. She turned her head upon the
pillow, clasping her hands tightly over her eyes. Ah, if she had
but gone back to him! They had loved each other, and somehow love
would have conquered. Did not love always conquer? What were
those words that she had read cut deep in the trunk of a dead tree?
They flashed through her brain more vividly than the glancing
lightning--the key to every closed door--the balm for every
wound--the ladder by which alone the top of the world is reached.
_Fide et Amore_! By Faith and Love!

There came again to her that curious feeling of revelation.
Looking back, she saw the man on horseback hewing those words while
she waited. The words themselves shone in fiery letters across.
her closed eyelids. She asked herself suddenly, with an awed
wonder if perchance her prayer had been answered after all, and she
had suffered the message to pass her by