"They
may have escaped--they may have been picked up."
Thyra looked at him with dull eyes.
"You know they have not. Not one of you has any hope. I have no
son. The sea has taken him from me--my bonny baby!"
She turned and went back to her desolate home. None dared to
follow her. Carl White went home and sent his wife over to her.
Cynthia found Thyra sitting in her accustomed chair. Her hands
lay, palms upward, on her lap. Her eyes were dry and burning.
She met Cynthia's compassionate look with a fearful smile.
"Long ago, Cynthia White," she said slowly, "you were vexed with
me one day, and you told me that God would punish me yet, because
I made an idol of my son, and set it up in His place. Do you
remember? Your word was a true one. God saw that I loved
Chester too much, and He meant to take him from me. I thwarted
one way when I made him give up Damaris. But one can't fight
against the Almighty. It was decreed that I must lose him--if
not in one way, then in another. He has been taken from me
utterly. I shall not even have his grave to tend, Cynthia."
"As near to a mad woman as anything you ever saw, with her awful
eyes," Cynthia told Carl, afterwards. But she did not say so
there. Although she was a shallow, commonplace soul, she had her
share of womanly sympathy, and her own life had not been free
from suffering. It taught her the right thing to do now.
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