She kissed her mother's face as she spoke, then hurried out, shawlless and bare-headed, into the chill morning air.
It was a dark and gloomy dawn, with a drizzle of rain falling steadily through the murky atmosphere.
A fine, white mist was drawn over the sea like a winding sheet. The sun had not tried to rise over the dismal prospect.
Xenie ran heedlessly down the veranda steps, and bent her steps to the seashore, looking about her carefully as she went, and calling frantically all the time:
"Lora, Lora, Lora! Where are you, my darling? Where are you?"
But no answer came to her wild appeal.
The soft, low patter of the steady rain, and the solemn sound of the waves as they madly surged upon the shore, seemed like a funeral requiem in her ears.
She could not bear the awful voice of the sea, for she remembered that Lora had hated it because her husband was buried in its illimitable waves.
But suddenly a faint and startling sound came to her ears.