And Miriam?
Sitting in her chair she did not scream, or moan, or faint. She leaned a little forward with her elbow on her knee, and looked at Hannah, looked at her long and steadily, with a strange wavering light in her eyes.
“Mother, mother, speak to me!” the girl cried, frightened at this light in her eyes, terrified that she said nothing, did nothing.
“Yes, dear, I am better to-day, yesterday I walked to the garden gate. I will even be strong enough to go down to the wharf when the Nereid comes in, and it will be such a glad surprise for him, such a glad surprise!”
She had leaned back in her chair again, and her face, like a revelation, was radiant once more almost with the lost beauty of her girlhood.
Hannah, dropping her head in her hands, could scarcely speak for the awful beating of her heart.
“No, no, Mother, you do not understand. He is—dead. He will—never come—home—”
The same wavering light flickered a second time in Miriam’s eyes as the girl spoke. She put up her thin hands for a moment and wearily stroked the silver hair back from her forehead. She looked slowly, with a bewildered expression about the room, then, smiling again, she said,—
“Home? Yes, the time is nearly up. In the Spring, in the early Spring, he shall be home, home to stay always. I know he will not disappoint me. I promised to wait patiently, and I have not complained, have I Hannah?”
“No, no——”