* * * * *

The candle began to flicker and, turning, she saw that it was spending its last dying flame.  It was impossible to write.  She lay still, watching the glimmering dark square of the window.  She could not see another candle there.  All she could see was the little phial of tabloids.  But she lay back and let the pain fasten on her.  The blazing needles that were piercing her, the blazing hammers that were battering her, gathered in fury and for a few merciful hours she lost consciousness.

When she wakened again the pain had completely gone and the first faint cool light was struggling through the mists on Ben Grief.  She groped about the counterpane and found her pencil, and went on writing.  This time the letters were not so proudly neat.  Many of them were shaky and spindlelegged and she knew it.

* * * * *

The candle went out, then.  Some hours have passed, and with them the pain.  A very beautiful thing has come to me;—­the peace that passeth all understanding until you’ve lost your body.  I understand now, very well.  Our lives are just God’s pathway, and we get in His way and have to be hurt before He can get along us.  I was, unconsciously, His pathway to Louis until you came along—­and you were a smoother pathway than I. His feet have blazed along my life now, burning out all the roughnesses—­crushing me down.  It’s been a heavy weight to carry—­the burden of salvation.  It is such a heavy weight that one can’t carry anything else.  I tried to carry myself, and prides and hungers and love for you.  All of them had to be blazed out.—­No—­not the love.  That could not go.  That and the courage will go on; pity perhaps will go, for only our bodies are pitiful.  But the love is deathless.  God’s banner over me was love.  I think I’ve read that somewhere His footmarks over my life were love.  I’ve not read that.  I had to find it out—­slowly, hungrily, painfully, strivingly, because I’ve always been such a fool.  But just this minute I’ve seen that I’ve been God’s Fool—­and God is Love.

* * * * *

The sun came up behind the pines on Ben Grief, golden and silver in the April morning.  Very faintly came the voices of the fishermen; in the next room she heard small, busy sounds; two faint falls made her smile.  Andrew had mechanically put on his shoes, thought better of it and kicked them off again.  She heard him creep along the landing to her door and listen.  When she tried to call him to come and kiss her she found that her voice had died.  She heard him say, quietly: 

“Mummy’s fast asleep,” and smiled again as she felt that he was running through the unbarred door shrieking and laughing in the delight of the soft air, the dancing sea, the kindly sun.  She knew that he had not washed his face, and worried a little about it, and then smiled again.

His voice grew fainter.  She tried to lift her hand to fold her letter.  It felt as though it were miles away from her, and too heavy to move.