* * * * * *
She looked out into the night. Her eyes demanded from it some balm to soothe their burning; her heart some solace for its pain. Her soul cried out against the silence without, which seemed such a maddening environment to the fightings within. Her whole being demanded an answering emotion from some one or something.
"Shake out, carols!
Solitary here—the night's carols!
Carols of lonesome love! Death's carols!
Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon—
Oh, under that moon where she drops almost down into the sea!
Oh, reckless, despairing carols!"
But the moon was mute, the night silent, and she was alone. She could not analyze her own emotions, nor vivisect her own soul; could not separate shreds of Desire, fibres of loneliness, tissues of misery, until she had disintegrated the whole mass of Despair that was crushing her.
She could but suffer.
* * * * * *
She lay prone upon the ledge of rock, her hands clutching the short, glossy mountain grass; resisting the wooing of the airy space below that called her to oblivion, purchased by one leap outward—a leap—no, one single step—out into the kindly air.
How small a price at which to buy immunity from those thorny roads she trod with bleeding feet, alone! Alone? Ah! Little My! ... The leaves were stirring with the morning's breath; the birds had not begun to sing yet, but were moving restlessly upon the branches and uttering their first waking calls—those ineffably sad heraldings of earliest dawn or latest night!
"Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns,
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds!"
The world lay silent under a reflectionless moonstone dome of gray when Myron Holder, with dew-drenched skirts and hair, relaxed limbs and pallid cheeks, entered the house where her child yet slept. Of the night's turmoil there was no trace save the signs of physical exhaustion. Her face was calm, her lips firm; her eyes shone undimmed with tears, unblurred by passion.