“For hours and hours we sailed the bay. The wind drove the fog before it until the air was clear, and I think that the sight of that waste of tumbling seas was more cruel than the veiling mist from which we ever looked for Lenore to come back to us. Ah, I cannot picture that time to thee—or to myself. At last, madame, we went back to the Castle. We left her there, the glory of our Seigneur’s life, alone with the pitiless sea. It was I that had done it; that I knew in my heart. That I have always known, and shall never forget. Yet Gerault never spoke a word of blame to me. Mayhap he never knew how it came about. For many months thereafter he was as a man crazed; and since that time he hath not been the same. All that long summer he stayed alone in his room, shut away from us all, seeing only Courtoise, who served him, and his mother, who gave him what comfort she could. Twice, too, he asked for me, and treated me with such kindness that it went near to breaking my heart. Ah, then it was that the Castle began to bear out its name! It seems as if none had ever really lived here since that time. “But Lenore, thou wouldst say. We never saw her again; though ’tis said that many weeks afterwards a woman’s body was cast up on the shore near St. Nazaire, and was burned there by the fisher-folk, as is their custom with those dead at sea. And they say that now, by night, her voice is heard to cry out along the shore near the inlet where Gerault’s boat once lay. “Many years are passed since these things happened; yet they have not faded from my memory, nor have they from that of my lord. Up to the time of thy coming, madame, he mourned for her always; nor did he abstain from asking forgiveness of Heaven for her end.” “Ah, Alixe, he hath not yet ceased to mourn for her. Alas! I cannot fill her place for him. He is uncomforted. How sad, how terrible her end, within the very sight of him she loved! Tell me, Alixe, was she very fair?” “Not, methinks, so fair as thou, madame. Yet she was beautiful to look on, with her dark hair and her pale, clear skin, and her mouth redder than a rose in June. Her eyes were dark—like shadowy stars. And her ways were gentle—gay—tender—anything to fit her mood. Ah! I am wounding thee!” Poor Lenore’s head was bent a little farther down, and by her shoulders her companion knew that she wept. Alixe would have given much to bring some comfort for the pain she had unintentionally roused. But in the presence of the unhappy wife, she sat uneasy and abashed, powerless to bring solace to that tortured heart.