"Why do you talk of this to-night?" said Charlotte, shunning the storm, as usual.
"Because I thank God, that, if He has made this failure, He will blot it out. I liked to fancy once that my mother would waken out of her long sleep into all her old loves and hates and fancies. I thank God now that she knows nothing,—that for her, and for all of us, after death, lies but an eternal blank."
In the pause, the dulled throb of the sea rose for an instant into a fierce warning cry, and then was gloomily still.
"It is as if the dead yonder would drive us back from their rest and silence,"—his speculative eye wandering dreamily out into the night.
But death and all that lay beyond were real to the practical woman beside him; there was no speculation in her eyes; it was an actual life he was dragging from before her; her child was in it; some day her own feet in Mesh and blood would tread there. She put her hand on his shoulder and leaned out beyond him, peering down over the shore, just as if in the night and cold beyond lay in truth the land of the dead.
"I am not afraid of their rest and silence," she cried,—"I'm not afraid, Jerome!"
The fair, clear-cut face came warm and living between him and the darkness; her voice called into the vague distance cheerful and strong.
She turned back to him glowing with color.
"Our boy is there," she said; "and there are others dead that I loved. I always knew they'd keep a watch for us, Jerome!"
He listened with a sad smile.