By and by, when something like calmness came to her again, she began another letter. It was to Reverend Mother at the convent. The last time Mary wrote she had told of her engagement, and her happiness. Reverend Mother had written back, forgiving and understanding her long silence—a loving letter, rejoicing in her joy; and it was in Mary's writing case at this moment, for she had intended to keep it always. But she could not have borne the pain of rereading it now, over the dead body of her happiness. She wrote quickly, not pausing between words and sentences, as in writing to Vanno. She told Reverend Mother nothing of the story, but said that she was ending her engagement with Prince Giovanni Della Robbia. "It is not because I don't love him," she explained, "but because I love him so dearly I want to do what is best for his whole life. I know that I shall love him always. I can no more forget him than I can forget that I have a heart which must go on beating while I live. But if you don't think a love like this—expecting, hoping for no return—too worldly, oh, Reverend Mother, will you let me come back to you and take the vows after all? I feel the convent is the only home for me; and I believe I am capable of higher, nobler aims because of what I have been taught by a great love. I yearn to be with you now, I am so homesick! I will go through any penance, even if it be years long, if at the end you will accept me for your daughter. I beg of you to write at once, and say if you will have me again. If your answer be yes, I will start immediately. I can hardly wait."
As she folded the letter she remembered how Hannaford had told the story of Galatea, likening her to the statue which had been given life without knowledge of the world. It was almost as if his voice spoke to her now, in this room he had loved, answering when she asked what became of Galatea in the end. "She went back to be a statue." "That is what I shall do," Mary said. "I shall go back into the marble."
All night long the mistral blew; and "out of the fall of lonely seas and the wind's sorrow," the lullaby Hannaford had desired for his ashes was sung under the rock where, already, his urn was enshrined.
At dawn the wild wailing ceased suddenly, as if the wind had drowned itself in the ocean; and Mary went out on to her balcony, in the dead silence which was like peace after war. The hollow bell of the sky, swept clear of clouds by the steel broom of the mistral, blazed with blue fire, and the sea was so crystal pure that it seemed one might look down through violet depths into the caves of the mer-people. The still air was very cold; and it seemed to Mary that if the joy of life were not exhausted for her, she might have felt excited and exuberantly happy, alone with the lovely miracle of this new day. As it was, she felt curiously calm, almost resigned to the thought that her heart, like a clock, had run down at the last hour of its happiness. She said to herself that Nemesis had brought her to this house, and there made her lay down her hopes of love. She had accepted much from Captain Hannaford, and had thought of him hardly at all. Now, it was almost as if she were offering this sacrifice to him. "It is Destiny," she said, as Eve Dauntrey had said a few hours ago.
The tired sea had gone to sleep, and was breathing deeply in its dreams, but to Mary it was not the same happy sea that she had looked out upon from her window at Rose Winter's, and at the Villa Mirasole. The little mumbling, baby mouths of the breathing waves bit toothlessly upon the rocks. Mary pitied the faintly heaving swells because they were to her fancy like wretched drowning animals, trying vainly forever to crawl up on land, and forever falling back.
"When I am in the convent, if Reverend Mother will take me in, I shall never look at the sea again," she thought, "yet I shall always hear it in my heart, remembering last night and to-day. After this I shall be only a hollow shell full of memories, as a shell is full of the voice of the sea."
Lady Dauntrey dared not let her husband take Mary's letters to the post until she had steamed the envelopes, and read what the girl had to say. If she had herself dictated those farewell words to Prince Vanno, they could not have suited her better; and there was nothing objectionable in the appeal to Reverend Mother at the Scotch convent. Only, perhaps it would be as well to keep back that letter for a day or two. The one to Vanno Lord Dauntrey carried with him to Monte Carlo, and posted it there according to Mary's wish.