The time went slowly by. The rain fell, and it was cold. Elizabeth lay down in the great square bed, and presently she slept, lulled by the steady dropping of the rain. She slept, and in her sleep she dreamed that she was sinking fathoms deep in a stormy, angry sea. Far overhead, she could hear the clash of the waves, and the long, long sullen roar of the swelling storm. And she went down and down into a black darkness that was deeper than any night—down, till she lost the roar of the storm above, down until all sound was gone, and she was alone in a black silence that would never lift or break again. Her soul was cold and blind, and most unendurably alone. Then something touched her, something that was warm. There came upon her that strange sense of home-coming, which comes to us in dreams, when love comes back to us across the sundering years, and all the pains of life, the pains of death, vanish and are gone, and we are come home—home to the place where we would be.
In her dream Elizabeth was come home. It was so long, so long, that she had wandered—so many years, so many lands—such weary feet and such a weary way. Now she was come home.
She stirred and opened her eyes. The rain had ceased. The room was dark, but the moon shone, for a single shaft struck between the curtains and lay above the bed like a silver feather dropped from some great passing wing.
Elizabeth was awake. She saw these things. She was come home. David’s arms were about her in the darkness.
CHAPTER XX
THE WOMAN OF THE DREAM
Oh, was it in the dead of night,
Or in the dark before the day,
You came to me and kneeling, knew
The thing that I would never say?
There was no star, nor any moon,