"But never again to you! Let the stillness of nature fall where there
must be stillness! Peace come with its peace! And the room which heard
our whisperings of the night, let it be the Room of the Silences--the
Long Silences! Adieu, cross of living fire that I have so clung
to!--Adieu!--Adieu!--Adieu!--Adieu!"_
She remained as motionless as though she had fallen asleep or would
not lift her head until there had ebbed out of her life upon his
pillow the last drop of things that must go.
She there--her whitening head buried on his pillow: it was Life's
Calvary of the Snows.
The dawn found her sitting in the darkest corner of the room, and
there it brightened about her desolately. The moment drew near when
she must awaken him; the ordeal of their meeting must be over before
the children rushed downstairs or the servants knocked.
She had plaited her hair in two heavy braids, and down each braid the
gray told its story through the black. And she had brushed it frankly
away from brow and temples so that the contour of her head--one of
nature's noblest--was seen in its simplicity. It is thus that the
women of her land sometimes prepare themselves at the ceremony of
their baptism into a new life.
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