AFTER THE DELUGE In one elemental instant there was loosed in the soul of Mary Gage a pent flood of emotion.

She let her heart go, let in the wilderness of primitive things again.

She was alive! She could see! She could be as other women! The flood of relief, of joy, of yearning, was a thing cosmic, so strong that regret and grief were for the time swept on and buried in the welter of emotions running free.
It was as though she had stepped absolutely from one world into another.

Suddenly, the people of her old world were gone.

There had been a shadow, a strange, magnified shadow of a soul, this man who had been called her husband.