at her side, and heard his laugh, sun-bright and glorious he seemed, her Phœbus Apollo—the father of her little son.
She saw the terrible sea which she had crossed to come to him—the white-crested waves, with turquoise lights and indigo depths, shifting and sliding unceasingly where all the world seemed swallowed in space, and the huge steamship so small a thing in the vast and perilous deep; and now—now she was here. What was she? What was life?
She had tried to find him, her David, and had been shown the dead, and the glory of the dead—all past and gone—her David's glory. Shown that long, empty gallery resounding with those aged footsteps, and the pictures—pictures—pictures—of men and women who had once been babes like her little son and David's, now dead and gone—not one soul among them all to greet her. Proud lords and dames in frames of gold; young men and maidens in costly silks and velvets of marvellous dyes, red-cheeked, red-lipped, and soullessly silent; and she, alone and undefended in their midst, holding in her arms their last descendant. All those painted fingers seemed lifted to point at her; those silent red lips parted to cry out at her, "Look at this stranger claiming to be one of us; send her away."
And David—her David—was one of these! What they had felt—what they had thought and striven for—was it all intensified and concentrated in him? Oh, if her soul could only reach to him, wherever he was, and penetrate this impalpable veil that stretched between them! If her hands could only touch him, her eyes look into his and see what lay in their depths for her!