Then far, oh, very far away,  
The Wind began to rise,
 
The Sun, the Moon, the Stars were gone,
 
I saw the Grey Wolf’s eyes.
 
The Wind rose up and rising, shone,
 
I saw it shine, I saw it rise,
 
And suddenly the dark was gone.
 
David Blake was married to Elizabeth Chantrey at half-past two of an April day. Edward and Mary Mottisfont were the only witnesses, with the exception of the verger, who considered himself a most important person on these occasions, when he invariably appeared to be more priestly than the rector and more indispensable than the bridegroom.
 
 
It requires no practice to be a bridegroom but years, if not generations, go to the making of the perfect verger. This verger was the son and the grandson of vergers. He was the perfect verger. He stood during the service and of David’s grey pallor, his shaking hand, and his unsteady voice. His black gown imparted a funerary air to the .
 
“Drinking, that’s what he’d been,” he told his wife, and his wife said, “Oh, William,” as one who makes response to an officiating priest.
 
But he wronged David, who was not drunk—only starved for lack of sleep, and strung to the breaking point. His voice stumbled over the words in which he took Elizabeth to be his wife and trailed away to a whisper at the conclusion.
 
A wind beat against the long grey windows, and between the the heavy rain thudded on the roof above.
 
Mary shivered in the vestry as she kissed Elizabeth and wished her joy. Then she turned to David and kissed him too. He was her brother now, and there would be no more nonsense. Edward frowned, David , and Elizabeth, near him, was aware that all his muscles had become .
 
Elizabeth and David went out by the vestry door, and stood a moment on the step. The rain had ceased quite suddenly in the April fashion. The sky was very black overhead and the air was full of a wet wind, but far down to the right the water meadows lay bathed in a clear sweet sunshine, and the west was as blue as a . Between the blue of the sky and the bright emerald of the grass, the horizon showed faintly golden, and a broken patch of rainbow light glowed against the nearest dark cloud.
 
David and Elizabeth walked to their home in silence. Mrs. Havergill awaited them with an air of mournful importance. She had prepared coffee and a cake with much almond icing and the word “Welcome” upon it in silver comfits. Elizabeth ate a piece of cake from a sense of duty, and David drank cup after cup of black coffee, and then sat in a sort of of until roused by the sound of the telephone bell.
 
After a minute or two he came back into the room.
 
“Ronnie is worse,” he said shortly. There was a change in him. He had pulled himself together. His voice was stronger.
 
“He’s worse. I must go at once. Don’t wait dinner, and don’t sit up. I may have to stay all night.”
 
When he had gone, Elizabeth went upstairs to . Mrs. Havergill followed her.
 
“You ’avn’t been in this room since Mrs. Blake was took.”
 
“It’s a very nice room,” said Elizabeth.
 
“All this furniture,” said Mrs. Havergill, “come out of the ’ouse in the ’Igh Street. That old mahogany press, Mrs. Blake set a lot of store by, and the bed, too. Ah! pore thing, I suppose she little thought as ’ow she’d come to die in it.”
 
The bed was a fine old four-poster, with a carved foot-rail. Elizabeth went past it to the windows, of which there were three, set fashion, at the end of the room, with a wide low window-seat running beneath them.
 
She got rid of Mrs. Havergill without hurting her feelings. Then she knelt on the seat, and looked out. She saw the river beneath her, and a line of trees in the first green mist of their new leaves. The river was dark and bright in patches, and the wind sang above it. Elizabeth’s heart was glad of this place. It was a thing she loved—to see green............