life and had poisoned her true spirit was come back broken and battered.
He was hanging between life and death; and now--for he was going
to-morrow--Varley would speak again.

The half-hour she had just spent in the hospital with Meydon had tried
her cruelly. She had left the building in a vortex of conflicting
emotions, with the call of duty and of honour ringing through a thousand
other voices of temptation and desire, the inner pleadings for a little
happiness while yet she was young. After she married Meydon, there had
only been a few short weeks of joy before her black disillusion came,
and she had realised how bitter must be her martyrdom.

When she left the hospital, she seemed moving in a dream, as one,
intoxicated by some elixir, might move unheeding among event and accident
and vexing life and roaring multitudes. And all the while the river
flowing through the endless prairies, high-banked, ennobled by living
woods, lipped with green, kept surging in her ears, inviting her,
alluring her--alluring her with a force too deep and powerful for weak
human nature to bear for long. It would ease her pain, it said; it would
still the tumult and the storm; it would solve her problem, it would give
her peace. But as she moved along the river-bank among the trees, she
met the little niece of the priest, who lived in his house, singing as
though she was born but to sing, a song which Finden had written and
Father Bourassa had set to music. Did not the distant West know Father
Bourassa's gift, and did not Protestants attend Mass to hear him play the
organ afterwards? The fresh, clear voice of the child rang through the
trees, stealing the stricken heart away from the lure of the river:

"Will you come back home, where the young larks are singin'?
The door is open wide, and the bells of Lynn are ringin';