"And I daresay you have your tender thoughts of her, though so badly treated," said Sunlocks.
"Well, yes," said the priest, "yes."
"You were chaplain at Reykjavik, but looking to be priest or dean, and perhaps bishop some day?" said Sunlocks.
"Well, maybe so; such dreams come in one's youth," said the priest.
"And when you were sent to Grimsey there was nothing before you but a cure of less than a hundred souls?" said Sunlocks.
"That is so," said the priest.
"The old story," said Sunlocks, and he drew a deep breath.
But deeper far was the breath that Greeba drew, for it seemed to be the last gasp of her heart.
A year passed, and never once had Greeba spoken that her husband might hear her. But if she did not speak, she listened always, and the silence of her tongue seemed to make her ears the more keen. Thus she found a way to meet all his wishes, and before he had asked he was answered. If the day was cold he found gloves to his hand; if he thought to wash there was water beside him; if he wished to write the pen lay near his fingers. Meantime he never heard more than a light footfall and the rustle of a dress about him, but as these sounds awoke painful memories he listened and said nothing.
The summer had come and gone in which he could walk out by the priest's arm, or lie by the hour within sound of a stream, and the winter had fallen in with its short days and long nights. And once, when the snow lay thick on the ground, Greeba heard him say how cheerfully he might cheat time of many a weary hour of days like that if only he had a fiddle to beguile them. At that she remembered that it was not want of money that had placed her where she was, and before the spring of that year a little church organ came from Reykjavik, addressed to the priest, as a present from someone whose name was unknown to him.