to the island; but there it lay, dreaming on the silver water,
with a great hawthorn in full flower shewing white upon its rocky side.
She made her way to the point nearest to the island, and there sat down
on a stone at the water's edge.

Opposite to her was the spot where she and George had drifted with the
water on their last night together. If she shut her eyes she could see
his sunburnt face, blanched by the moonlight, his strong shoulders, his
hands--which she had kissed--lying on the oars. And mingling with the
vision was that other--of a grey, dying face, a torn and broken body.

Her heart was full of intensest love and yearning; but the love was no
longer a torment. She knew now that if she had been able to tell George
everything, he would never have condemned her; he would only have opened
his arms and comforted her.

She was wrapped in a mystical sense of communion with him, as she sat
dreaming there. But in such a calm and exaltation of spirit, that there
was ample room besides in her mind for the thought of William
Farrell--her friend. Her most faithful and chivalrous friend! She
thought of Farrell's altered aspect, of the signs of a great task laid
upon him, straining even his broad back. And then, of his loneliness.
Cicely was gone--his 'little friend' was gone.

What could she still do for him? It seemed to her that even while George
stood spiritually beside her, in this scene of their love, he was
bidding her think kindly and gratefully of the man whom he had blessed
in dying--the man who, in loving her, had meant him no harm.

Her mind formed no precise image of the future. She was incapable,
indeed, as yet, of forming any that would have disturbed that intimate
life with George which was the present fruit in her of remorseful love
and pity. The spring shores of Rydal, the meadows steeping their
flowery grasses in the water, the new leaf, the up-curling fern,
breathed in her unconscious ear their message of re-birth. But she knew
only that she was uplifted, strengthened--to endure and serve.

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