"'Tis a woman," said Ivor, "resting; tired, I suppose, poor thing!" But as he approached nearer his eyes took a troubled, anxious look. "Can it be Mari Vone? 'tis like her red petticoat."
The boy ran on.
"Yis, 'tis Mari Vone, asleep, I think."
And Ivor hastened up to see a sight which in all the coming years he never forgot.
Yes; 'twas Mari Vone who lay there, half reclining against the grassy hedge, her cheek resting upon her hand, her pillow a clump of harebells and wild thyme. Evidently she had thrown herself down to rest, and rest was depicted upon every feature of her face, and every curve of her figure; the white eyelids were closed, the waxen cheek was scarcely paler than usual, and on the lips was a smile of ineffable sweetness.
"There's nice she looks!" said the boy, in an awed whisper, "like an angel!"
"Yes," said Ivor, chafing her hands, "like an angel as she is. Go, run to the village and bring somebody here, and a sail to carry her."
For there was no doubt about it, Mari Vone was dead. The heart had ceased to beat, and though she was still warm, and the fingers which Ivor rubbed and pressed were pliant as his own, he never doubted the fact; he knew that that gentle spirit had quitted the beautiful tenement in which it had lived for thirty-seven years; he knew that he should never more see it look out of those deep blue eyes, never hear it speak with that tongue now silent, and a flood of sorrow filled his heart. He sat beside her while the sun sank below the horizon; the grassy pillow upon which she lay shone with the burnished gold of its last rays, which threw also with its last kiss a rosy flush over Mari's face. Ivor gazed at her with something of the awe which the boy had felt.
"Was it possible that this was death?"
The sea sighed and whispered on the shore below, the evening breeze lifted the little stray curls of her golden hair. A thrush in a thorn-bush near sang its last song to the sinking sun; the flowers seemed to send up a stronger perfume as they bent and trembled in the sea-breeze; the clouds of gold and copper speckled the pale blue sky; everything in earth, sea, and sky seemed to speak of beauty and love, and in the next silent half-hour Ivor realised more vividly the nearness of things unseen than in his work-a-day life he had ever done before.