He seized her arm while his tears fell on her wrist, which never quivered under their hot touch. "Laviny!" he cried, "Oh, he hadn't ought to have done it! Don't leave me alone with _it_--the little one!" he shrieked. "Why didn't you tell me it was here? Oh, Laviny, Laviny girl!" But Lavina Beckett paid no heed. She had embarked for a stranger port and over stormier seas than any her husband had dared. The sound of the old man's sobs brought a woman to the door. Her figure surged with fat. One of her teeth projected when her face was in repose. She hastily approached the bed, but even she was awed. "Don't make sech a noise," she said finally. "It ain't no use. You can't call her back now. If you could've managed to bring _him_, it would've been different likely. But you didn't. You never did manage, I guess, to do anything you set out to." But the old man paid no heed. He sat with his hands on his knees, his head dropped forward, inefficient, old, broken down by grief, and a thin low wail for the second time broke the silence. CHAPTER II THE WAITING OF WOMEN Lavina Beckett lay in the front room of the old house, and people passing glanced askance at the closed blinds. Recent death inhabits a place more completely than life, and Lavina's personality seemed to lurk in the panels of the grey door, in the branches of the lilac bush, and even extended to the road. All through the day neighbours came to offer condolences. Then, shrewd-faced, with the marks of child-bearing, hard work and a harsh climate in every line, these respectable wives of lobstermen took their way home in little groups. In the house they had borne themselves somewhat awkwardly, and once outside, their pity for the dead woman appeared tinged with resentment. Little was known about her at the Point.