Gradually the tender melancholy of the dying day touched her mood with subtle sympathy and soothed her troubled spirit. Rapt in rueful revery, she followed mechanically the flight of a flock of birds. Like swift shadows flitting over the water, they dipped and winged upward and away, out of her vision.
Frederick had gone from her life almost as completely and as suddenly as those birds had disappeared from her sight. How mercilessly short had been her days of happiness, those days threaded and inter-threaded with her husband's love.
The sun had set and the purples and reds were fading from the fleecy clouds in the eastern sky. The gloaming grew in caressing cadences up from the limpid lake to the ragged rocks. The night winds blew gently down the hill side, the swaying leaves were whispering "hush, hush," and the surface of the lake, shimmering in the mellow light of the rising moon, was flecked here and there into silvery sparkles. The airs of evening fluttered the ringlets upon her forehead and enveloped her hot body in cooling comfort. Responsive to the quiet beauty about her, the turmoil of her thoughts subsided. The sharp anguish which had at first stunned her was becoming but a dull ache, permitting her to think connectedly.
This place and this hour held the most vital associations of her young life. Here in the gathering gloom, Frederick had wooed and won her, and had spent with her many of the too few hours of her wedded bliss. Upon such another evening, she had made him the promises that had led to her only deceptions of Daddy Skinner, and here, four short days ago, her husband had murdered her joy.
Reflecting upon her plight, its hopelessness well nigh overwhelmed her. Through the utter desolution of her life rang the haunting, words of the Cantata she'd heard sung last Eastertide in the Big Ithaca Church.
"Oh, was there ever loneliness like this?"
Over and over the melody repeated itself, insistently recalling the Master's agony in the garden, and lifting her thoughts slowly upward away from herself to His ultimate triumph and glory.
Betrayed and deserted by the man that loved her, she fixed her attention instinctively upon the Divine Love "with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning" and sought courage from the words of Him "who spake as never man spake." His command, "Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you and pray for them which despitefully use you," came to her tortured heart, a healing inspiration.
Immediately she got to her feet. The dog, tired of the enforced inactivity, jumped up and ran to and fro on the rocks, barking. She had given her husband up to another woman—he had said it was all she could do for him. But she loved him and her love rejoiced in giving. Pete, puzzled that the girl did not join him in his play as usual, came back and stood in front of her and looked up into her face. She turned to the old pine tree, her familiar friend, and extended her arms to the God of her exalted faith.
"Goddy, dear, goodest Goddy," she prayed, "bless my Frederick wherever he air—an'—help Tessibel to die—in—in the spring."