again. And this, perhaps, was why she found his love so welcome and so com- forting. As a child, tired out with tears, creeps to the grateful shelter of its mother's arms, seeking sympathy and consolation, so she leaned upon this strong, true heart, and was folded in the restful tenderness of a great, unselfish love.
Some women there are who are resolute and brave, who suffer in silence and alone, but shrink from sharing a sorrow, and who shut grief up in the breast and guard it jealously, fronting, meantime, the battle of life with unflinching eyes and set teeth. But Elise was not of these. Weak, wayward and inconsistent, hitherto a stranger to trouble, she rebelled against this seeming cruelty of fate and welcomed the soothing balm of sympathy. There were times when, for her soul's salvation she felt that she must clutch that leaden weight that was her heart, and with her two maimed hands, tear it from her breast. "While my heart beats it must ache," she cried; "and oh, it is driving me mad!"
Odin's friendship took the keen edge off the pain, but was powerless to ease the dull and constant ache that was, after all, so far more wearing than any acute agony. There was a certain quality of manly strength in Odin's character that invited dependence from a woman like Elise, who was sufficient unto herself only while the sun shone and the skies were blue. Therefore it as well that he had been constant.
The days drifted by peacefully enough to all outward seeming. The little household in the pine grove was left to itself but for Odin's daily visits, and the changes that had affected the upper river had not extended in this direction. There was still a mile of deep, untrodden forest between the cabin and the village, and the fishing fleet never touched prow on the narrow strip of sandy beach that stretched along its water-guarded front. There was always the ocean for company and the two girls gave themselves up unreservedly to the blended charm of sea and sky and sun-kissed shore. For the tender blue of the bending sky that melted and merged in the bluer sea those fair October days was a joy no true-born child of nature could resist.
They spent hours upon the hills or in a. boat upon the river, silent always, or speaking vague half-thoughts as in a dream, disjointedly, dreaming with wide open eyes through all that perfect month, yet still unconscious that they dreamed. Beautiful to hold in memory, those softly glowing days and nights, like amethysts and pearls strung on a golden thread; and to Elise, in after years, the recollection of their beauty and their quiet was like a benediction.
With the beginning of November came the storms sweeping up from the great, wide seas and lashing the silent river to a wild fury. In the wake of the wind followed the rain, and for days it was not possible to venture out. This imprisonment was hardest for the child. He was like a little wild thing in his love of outdoors, and now that he was housed, like a squirrel in a cage, he fretted in a silent way that was infinitely touching to Elise, to whom he had grown dearer with every year of his young life. He would stand for hours with his round, brown face pressed against the window pane gazing out at the white-capped, tumbling waves glimpsed through the tossing branches of the pines. How often, in her own childhood, she had stood at that same narrow casement: and watched the driving storms through' her brief untroubled winter days! She- knew, from her own experience, how the- boy was longing for the clouds to clear and let him out upon the hills among the huckleberry and salal.
It was about this time that the shadow of a great fear began to darken their lives. They tried to put it away, to believe it was not there. They laughed and chatted as they had never done in all their days of close companionship, cheat- ing themselves with forced and artificial gaiety. But no matter whether they talk- ed or read, or sew r ed, or whether they sat silent in the fire-light listening to the- wind rustling among the trees and the- sharp, swift patter of the rain upon the- shingles, the fear was with them, a ghostly presence that shaped itself from the shadows in the corners, and pressed' nearer and nearer day by day. And then came a morning in midwinter when Nanita, on rising, was forced to return;
