A tiny spot in the heavens, truly, was moving across the field of vision!
With a cry, a sudden flushing of her face, now so wan and colorless, she seemed to throw all her senses into one sense, the power of sight. And though her hand began to shake so terribly that she could only with a great effort hold the glass, she steadied it against a fern-tree and thus managed to find again and hold the moving speck.
The Pauillac! Was it indeed the Pauillac and Allan?
“Merciful Heaven!” she stammered. “Bring him back--to me!”
Again she watched, her whole soul aflame with hope and eagerness and tremulous joy, ready to burst into a blaze of happiness--and then came disillusion and despair, blacker than ever and more terrible.
For suddenly the moving speck turned, wheeled and rose. One second she caught sight of wings. She knew now it was only some huge, tropic bird, afar on the horizon--some condor, vulture, or other creature of the air.
Then, as with a quick swoop, the vulture slid away and vanished behind a blue hill-shoulder, the woman dropped her glass, sank to earth, and--half-fainting--burst into a terrible, dry, sobbing plaint. Her tears, long since exhausted, would not flow. Grief could pass no further limits.
After a time she grew calmer, arose and thought of her child once more. Slowly she returned down the via dolorosa of the terrace-path, the walk where she and Allan had so often and so gaily trodden; the path now so barren, so hateful, so solitary.
To her little son she returned, and in her arms she cherished him--in her trembling arms--and the tears came at last, welcome and heart-stilling.
Old Gesafam, gazing compassionately with troubled eyes that blinked behind their mica shields, laid a comforting hand on the girl's shoulder.