THE MESSAGE OF THE NIGHT
and she wept as though her heart were broken. For whom and for what did she weep like that? Was she mother, or wife, or sweetheart? Perhaps she wept for Sterkoff, who lay in peril of death. Perhaps she loved big Mistitch, over whom hovered the shadow of swift and relentless doom. Or maybe her sorrow was remote from all that touched them or touched the girl who listened to her sobs—the bitter sobs which she did not seek to check, which filled the night with a dirge of immeasurable sadness. In the darkness, and to Sophy's ignorance of anything individual about her, the woman was like a picture or a sculpture—some type or monument of human woe—a figure of embodied sorrow, crying that all joy ends in tears—in tears in tears.
She went by, not seeing her watcher. The sound of her sobbing softened with distance, till it died down to a faint, far-off moan. Sophy herself gave one choked sob. Then fell the silence of the night again. Was that its last message—the last comment on what had passed? Tears—and then silence? Was that the end?
Sophy never learned aught of the woman—who she was or why she wept. But her memory retained the vision. It had come as the last impression of a night no moment of which could ever be forgotten. What had it to say of all the rest of the night's happenings? Sophy's exaltation fell from her; but her courage stood against darkness, solitude, and the unutterable sadness of that forlorn wailing. Dauntlessly she looked forward and upward still, yet with a new insight for the cost.
So for Sophy passed the name-day of King Alexis.
