And the night is dark and no moon you see
Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!
When the doors are open the bird is free
Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!"




VII

These words kept ringing in Jen's ears as she stood again in the doorway
that night with her face turned to the beacon. How different it seemed
now! When she saw it last night it was a cheerful spirit of light--a
something suggesting comfort, companionship, aspiration, a friend to the
traveller, and a mysterious, but delightful, association. In the morning
when she returned from that fortunate, yet most unfortunate, ride, it was
still burning, but its warm flame was exhausted in the glow of the life-
giving sun; the dream and delight of the night robbed of its glamour by
the garish morning; like her own body, its task done, sinking before the
unrelieved scrutiny of the day. To-night it burned with a different
radiance. It came in fiery palpitations from the earth. It made a sound
that was now like the moan of pine trees, now like the rumble of far-off
artillery. The slight wind that blew spread the topmost crest of flame
into strands of ruddy hair, and, looking at it, Jen saw herself rocked to
and fro by tumultuous emotions, yet fuller of strength and larger of life
than ever she had been. Her hot veins beat with determination, with a
love which she drove back by another, cherished now more than it had ever
been, because danger threatened the boy to whom she had been as a mother.
In twenty-four hours she had grown to the full stature of love and
suffering.