When the two men went out the night-air smelt sweet and moist, for rain had fallen, and the city trees were still dripping with the wet and rustling in the wind. The weather had changed suddenly, and now, in the deep blue overhead, they knew the clouds were passing swiftly by. Was it the coming light of the morning that seemed to give depth and richness to that dark-blue vault, while the pavements of the streets and the houses grew vaguely distinct and gray? Suddenly, in turning the corner into Piccadilly, they saw the moon appear in a rift of those passing clouds, but it was not the moonlight that shed this pale and wan grayness down the lonely streets. It is just at this moment, when the dawn of the new day begins to tell, that a great city seems at its deadest; and in the profound silence and amid the strange transformations of the cold and growing light a man is thrown in upon himself, and holds communion with himself, as though he and his own thoughts were all that was left in the world. Not a word passed between the two men, and Lavender, keenly sensitive to all such impressions, and now and again shivering slightly, either from cold or nervous excitement, walked blindly along the deserted streets, seeing far other things than the tall houses and the drooping trees and the growing light of the sky.
It seemed to him at this moment that he was looking at Sheila's funeral. There was a great stillness in that small house at Borvabost. There was a boat—Sheila's own boat—down at the shore there, and there were two or three figures in black in it. The day was gray and rainy; the sea washed along the melancholy shores; the far hills were hidden in mist. And now he saw some people come out of the house into the rain, and the bronzed and bearded men had oars with them, and on the crossed oars there was a coffin placed. They went down the hillside. They put the coffin in the stern of the boat, and in absolute silence, except for the wailing of the women, they pulled away down the dreary Loch Roag till they came to the island where the burial-ground is. They carried the coffin up to that small enclosure, with its rank grass growing green and the rain falling on the rude stones and memorials. How often had he leaned on that low stone wall, and read the strange inscriptions in various tongues over the graves of mariners from distant countries who had met with their death on this rocky coast! Had not Sheila herself pointed out to him, with a sad air, how many of these memorials bore the words "who was drowned;" and that, too, was the burden of the rudely-spelt legends beginning "Hier rutt in Gott," or "Her under hviler stovit," and sometimes ending with the pathetic "Wunderschen ist unsre Hoffnung." The fishermen brought the coffin to the newly-made grave, the women standing back a bit, old Scarlett MacDonald stroking Mairi's hair and bidding the girl control her frantic grief, though the old woman herself could hardly speak for her tears and her lamentations. He could read the words "Sheila Mackenzie" on the small silver plate: she had been taken away from all association with him and his name. And who was this old man with the white hair and the white beard, whose hands were tightly clenched, and his lips firm, and a look as of death in the sunken and wild eyes? Mackenzie was gray a year before—
"Ingram," he said suddenly, and his voice startled his companion, "do you think it is possible to make Sheila happy again?"
"How can I tell?" said Ingram.
"You used to know everything she could wish—everything she was thinking about. If you find her out now, will you get to know? Will you see what I can do—not by asking her to come back, not by trying to get back my own happiness, but anything, it does not matter what it is, I can do for her? If she would rather not see me again, I will stay away. Will you ask her, Ingram?"
"We have got to find her first," said his companion.
"A young girl like that," said Lavender, taking no heed of the objection, "surely she cannot always be unhappy. She is so young and beautiful, and takes so much interest in many things: surely she may have a happy life."
"She might have had."
"I don't mean with me," said Lavender, with his haggard face looking still more haggard in the increasing light. "I mean anything that can be done—any way of life that will make her comfortable and contented again—anything that I can do for that. Will you try to find it out, Ingram?"
"Oh yes, I will," said the other, who had been thinking with much foreboding of all these possibilities ever since they left Sloane street, his only gleam of hope being a consciousness that this time at least there could be no doubt of Frank Lavender's absolute sincerity, of his remorse, and his almost morbid craving to make reparation if that were still possible.