CHAPTER XXII
THE END

"—And the ballade humbly prays,
The tribute of your sighs,
For the hawke's blinde little eyes,
—And the cavalier who lies
By the four cross ways."

The little falcon came back last night. It has been weeks away, but it came back last night, and I feel it even now pinching at my wrist. It seems to say, "Hurry, you have nearly finished." It seems anxious for me to go with it. Where? I do not know.

I can scarcely write. I am half-blind with what? God only knows. Not tears, for I have no tears left. A darkness has stolen over my brain. In writing this story I have drawn the past up to me like an unwilling ghost: I have kissed it on the forehead, mouth, and eyes, and now that my story is finished it has slipped back into the darkness, and I am left alone.

They have buried Geraldine. Not in the little church in the park, where all the Wilders are buried; she has a grave of her own outside the church, and on the marble headstone is the name "Beatrice Sinclair."

But I shall be buried in the church, and I know that my tablet will bear the inscription, "Sir Gerald Wilder, Kt." so that even our dust may not meet,—what matter?

I am not afraid to die; in fact, if I could be glad about anything, I should now be glad. Death seems to me such a little withered, contemptible figure, for ever jealous of Love—yet sometimes death seems to me like a white marble portico, seen down an alley of cypress trees, under a sky all dark with autumn.

Beneath the ocean spray
Strange things lie hid away;
And in the gloom
Of many a tomb
Lie stranger things than they.
But in the world, I wis,
Nought is more strange than this—
The love of Death for May.
Nothing more strange above
The skies where eagles rove;
Nothing below the winter snow
Or flowers that spring winds move;
Nought in eternity
Or time, unless it be
The love of Death for Love.

TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.