In it, in these days of summer, was no abiding place for
gloom; yet in his own heart, as he drew nearer to his home, was a place
of darkness which its light could not quite enter.
The tundras had made Mary Standish more real to him. In the treeless
spaces, in the vast reaches with only the sky shutting out his vision,
she seemed to be walking nearer to him, almost with her hand in his. At
times it was like a torture inflicted upon him for his folly, and when
he visioned what might have been, and recalled too vividly that it was
he who had stilled with death that living glory which dwelt with him in
spirit now, a crying sob of which he was not ashamed came from his lips.
For when he thought too deeply, he knew that Mary Standish would have
lived if he had said other things to her that night aboard the ship. She
had died, not for him, but _because_ of him--because, in his failure to
live up to what she believed she had found in him, he had broken down
what must have been her last hope and her final faith. If he had been
less blind, and God had given him the inspiration of a greater wisdom,
she would have been walking with him now, laughing in the rose-tinted
dawn, growing tired amid the flowers, sleeping under the clear
stars--happy and unafraid, and looking to him for all things.
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