Madame understood and sincerely pitied them both, but there seemed to be nothing to say. She leaned back in her chair, with her eyes closed, pretending to be asleep, but, in reality, watching Alden as he stared vacantly at the paper he held in his shaking hands. [Sidenote: Poor Comfort] At last he rose and went out upon the veranda. Madame started from her chair, then forced herself to lean back again, calmly. She heard the scraping of his chair as he moved it along the veranda, out of the way of the light that came through the open window. For a long time there was silence. Longing to comfort him and unable to endure it longer, Madame went out, softly. He did not hear her step, for his head was bowed upon his hands. From a room above Edith's light streamed out afar into the sweet darkness, drawing toward it all the winged wayfarers of the night. Madame slipped her arm around his shoulders, and bent down to him. "Dear," she said brokenly, "she's married." Alden drew a quick, shuddering breath, and freed himself roughly from the tender clasp. "I know it, Mother," he cried, in a voice vibrant with pain. "For God's sake, don't remind me of that!" XVIII Starbreak [Sidenote: Edith's Failure] Through the long night Edith lay awake, thinking. Her senses were blindly merged into one comprehensive hurt. She was as one who fares forth in darkness, knowing well the way upon which he must go, yet longing vainly for light. Her path lay before her, mercilessly clear and distinct. A trick of memory took her back to what Madame had said, the day after she came: "The old way would have been to have waited, done the best one could, and trusted God to make it right in His good time." She remembered, too, her bitter answer: "I've waited and I've done the best I could, and I've trusted, but I've failed." Keenly she perceived the subtlety of her punishment. Attempting to bind the Everlasting with her own personal limitations, her own desires, she had failed to see that at least half of a rightful prayer must deal with herself. She had asked only that her husband might love her; not that she might continue to love him. [Sidenote: Out of Harmony] Now, with her heart and soul wholly in the keeping of another man, the boon had been granted her, in bitterness and ashes and desolation. He had said, in his letter, that her coming away had made him think. Through her absence he had seen the true state of affairs between them, as she could never have made him see it if she had remained at home. This, then, was God's way of revelation to him, but--to her? The truth broke upon her with the vividness of a lightning flash. It was the way of revelation to her also, but how? She sat up in bed, propping herself back against the pillows, her mind groping eagerly for the clue.