l be wondering."

"Ah!" He passed his hand over his eyes. He was swaying a little as he
stood. She supported his elbow, for he seemed to have lost control of
his limbs. He stared at her in a dazed way. "You'd better go and tell
your Aunt Liza," he said. "I think I'll stay here a bit longer. Maybe my
boy'll come and talk to me if I'm alone. We're partners, you know, and
we lived here a good many years alone together. He wouldn't leave
me--not for the long voyage--without a word. Yes, you go, my dear, you
go! I'll stay here and wait for him."

She saw that no persuasion of hers would move him, and it seemed useless
to remain. An intolerable restlessness urged her, moreover, to be gone.
The awful inertia of the past two hours had turned into a fevered desire
for action. It was the swing of the pendulum, and she felt that if she
did not respond to it she would go mad.

Her knees were still trembling under her, but she controlled them and
turned to the door. As she lifted the latch she looked back and saw Adam
drop heavily into the chair upon which he had leaned for so long. His
attitude was one of almost stubborn patience, but it was evident that
her presence had ceased to count with him. He was waiting--she saw it
clearly in every line of him--waiting to bid his boy Godspeed ere he
fared forth finally on the long voyage from which there is no return.

A sharp sob rose in her throat. She caught her hand to it, forcing it
back. Then, barefooted, she stepped out into the grey dimness that
veiled all things, and left the door of Rufus's cottage open behind
her.

CHAPTER X

THE LONG VOYAGE

She never remembered afterwards how she accomplished the homeward
journey. The rough stones cut her feet again and again, but she never
felt the pain. She went as one who has an urgent mission to perform,
though what that mission was she scarcely knew.

The night--that night of dreadful tragedy--had changed her. Columbine,
the passionate, the impulsive had turned into a being that was foreign
to herself. All the happy girlhood had been stamped out of her as by the
cruel pressure of a hot iron. She had ceased to feel the agony of it;
somehow she did not think that she ever could feel pain again. The nerve
tissues had been destroyed and all vitality was gone. The creature that
passed like a swift shadow through the twilight of the dawn was an old
and withered woman who had lived beyond her allotted time.

She reached the old