In it, in these days of summer, was no abiding place for gloom; yet in his own heart, as he drew nearer to his home, was a place of darkness which its light could not quite enter.
The tundras had made Mary Standish more real to him.

In the treeless spaces, in the vast reaches with only the sky shutting out his vision, she seemed to be walking nearer to him, almost with her hand in his.

At times it was like a torture inflicted upon him for his folly, and when he visioned what might have been, and recalled too vividly that it was he who had stilled with death that living glory which dwelt with him in spirit now, a crying sob of which he was not ashamed came from his lips.
For when he thought too deeply, he knew that Mary Standish would have lived if he had said other things to her that night aboard the ship.

She had died, not for him, but _because_ of him--because, in his failure to live up to what she believed she had found in him, he had broken down what must have been her last hope and her final faith.

If he had been less blind, and God had given him the inspiration of a greater wisdom, she would have been walking with him now, laughing in the rose-tinted dawn, growing tired amid the flowers, sleeping under the clear stars--happy and unafraid, and looking to him for all things.