little less grandiloquent than at a funeral, said:

'He'm less like a minister than a nest of birds.' She and Mrs. Marston
were setting out the feather-cups in the best parlour.

At that moment Edward stood at the door of Hazel's room, and realized
that he would enter it no more. He must not see the sweet disarray of
her unpacking, nor rest night by night in the charmed circle of her
presence. Almost he felt, in this agony of loss--loss of things never
possessed, the most bitter loss of all--that, if he could have had
these things, even the ruddy-haired, golden-eyed children of his dreams
might go. He knelt by Hazel's bed and laid his dark head on the pillow,
torn by physical and spiritual passion. His hair was clammy, and a new
line marked his forehead from that day. Anyone seeing him would have
thought that he was praying; he was so still. It was Edward's fate to
be thought 'so quiet,' because the fires within him made no sound,
burning at a still-white heat.

He was not praying. Prayer had receded to a far distance, like a
signpost long passed. Perhaps he would come round to it again; but now
he was in the trackless desert. It is only those that have suffered
moderately that speak of prayer as the sufferer's refuge. By that you
know them. Those that have been tortured remember that the worst part
of the torture was the breaking of the prayer in their hands, piercing,
and not upholding.

Edward knew, kneeling there with his eyes shut, how Hazel's hair would
flow sweetly over the pillow; how her warm arm would feel about his
neck; how wildly sweet it would be, in some dark hour, to allay
dream-fears and hush her to sleep. Never before had the gracious