Lights of homes shone through the night’s darkness. Beams as of sunshine danced across the water.
A light from an upper chamber in the nearest home shone across her and streamed onward to the sands.
Elsie stood clasping and unclasping her little slender hands. The waters,—they could wash away that blow, the marks of that blow, wash away those words threatening death from one who had killed something in her heart. She realized that she was not afraid, facing the life to come.
She was afraid only to go on living in the same world with one who had taken her girlhood and her womanhood, afraid only of this frightful fever in her veins, of this poison that was consuming her.
Out yonder were the cool deeps of death—of death? What then? Far across the waves she saw a light.
It was as if her spirit went to meet the light, went in quest of the meaning of such a beacon light across black waters.
The light seemed to grow bigger and bigger as she gazed. By flinging her frail body into the dreadful surges could one reach peace and safety?
Faintly her spirit heard the answer of the pursuing hound of heaven, faintly she heard the call of eternity and of the Eternal Love.
The great black billows called to her. Elsie wondered what all the poor girls the waves toss up along the shores say to their Maker. She seemed to feel with them as she stood there, how the waves seize the bodies of the lost,—how the undertow takes them. Elsie put her hands to her face.
“Why am I here alone in the night?” she heard herself asking. Her voice sounded strangely familiar, yet unfamiliar as if some one were speaking to her. Then she knew that the voice was her own soul in the silence.