There was long silence, and both prayed, till Rhoda faltered to the betrayal of her unregenerate heart: 'Was she so very fair indeed? Where is she laid? Take me—oh, let me once look upon her face.'
'It may not be. She lies a day buried, there without among our own dead—although—God only knows what she was.'
Rhoda again would rise.
'Yet take me there. Night-time? Ah yes, night, night that will never pass.'
At daybreak she stood, alone at her desire, beside a new-made grave, and knew that the body of Diadyomene lay beneath, and knew hardly less surely, that somewhere beneath the sea she overlooked the body of Christian lay. Nearest the sea was the grave on the windblown, barren cliff. No flower could bloom there ever, only close dun turf grew. Below stretched the broken, unquiet sea, fretted with rock and surf, deep chanting of the wind and moon. One white sea-bird was wheeling and pitching restlessly to and fro.
She turned her eyes to the land far east for the thought of Lois. Over there a winter dawn flushes into rose, kindles bright and brighter, and a ruddy burnish takes the edges of flat cloud. Lo! the sun, and the grey sea has flecks of red gold and the sea-bird gleams. She cannot face it.
Rhoda knelt down by the grave to pray. Presently she was lying face downward along the turf, and she whispered to the one lying face upward below.
'Ah! Diadyomene, ah! Margaret. God help me truly to forgive you for what you have done.
'I have tried. Because he asked it, I have torn out my heart praying for you.
'You fair thing! you were fairer than I, but you did not love him so well as I.