Eldris came out upon the beach from between the rows of tottering houses. She cast away her torch and stretched her hands to the east, where momently the earth was turning from black to gray, steeped in a haze as of twilight, the strange half-light of dawn.
"O day, come swiftly and give me back my own! I shall put my hands upon his breast and say, 'Take me, for I am all, all thine and love's, and where thou goest there will I go also, for my God is love. I am only woman, and weak and very weary, and I love thee. Ah, dear God! I would leave heaven and all the angels for thine arms!' And he will take me in his arms, and I shall fear nothing any more. O day, come swiftly!"
Along the beach she hastened, light-footed, and came to the lumber-pile, with no more than a glance for the Roman soldier who lay upon it, his duty done. And so, behind the lumber-pile, with but a strip of gray sand between his bed and the broad river, she found him, with the dawn-light upon his face.
As once before she had gone to him and knelt beside him as he slept, so she thought to go to him again. But this time she would not fear to wake him, for he, her lord, had called her, and her delight was to obey. She had come to yield herself his, body and soul forever, and in her face the bridal joy outshone the bridal terror. She would do this and that; thought to play with her joy to taste the sweetness of its savor; but suddenly all her thought was lost in the flood of love triumphant which rose to overwhelm her. She ran forward, her arms outflung to him, crying:
"Beloved, wake, for I am come to thee! All my soul is a flame of fire, and the fire is love which blindeth me to all in earth and heaven save only thee. Wilt thou not wake and take me?" On her knees she threw herself beside him.
But he did not move, nor did he speak in answer.
And even in the moment of her exaltation, Eldris understood. Her words broke; an instant she knelt with arms outstretched above him; she ceased to breathe, and her face froze into lines of stone. But suddenly she gave a cry, loud and sharp, and her hands fell upon him. Her eyes awoke into living terror; with desperate fingers she strove to turn his face further to the light. At the weight of him she shook and shuddered; she had felt that horrible dead weight before, that sullen settling into itself of his bulk as her hands left it. In the gray light of the slow dawning she turned his face toward her, gray, and smiling, and still. She looked down upon him and put her hands to her throat.
"I am glad, ay, glad, that thy mouth is not open and screaming at me!" she said aloud, in a dead voice.
The sense of her words smote her, and she closed her eyes with a long-drawn whispering moan.
Again she looked at him, scarcely believing; and once more the flood overwhelmed her. She wrung her hands and brought them down before her face.