ht have expected of me?

Well, I had dreamed of higher things--but this was a strange, restless,
disappointing world. If one saw a plain path open before one's feet, one
might as well walk quietly along that way. There were thorns in every
path, and it would be nice to be rich, very rich.

My thoughts wandered through a wide field of imaginary delight,
encountering only one serious obstacle in the way of their elysium, and
that was the fisherman himself considered as a life-long escort and
companion.

In my youthful dreams, I had cherished, to be sure, a score of mild
Arthur Greys and stern Stephen Montgomerys. My Arthurs had all died of
inherited consumption. I had taken leave of their departing spirits under
the most thrilling circumstances, having frequently been married to them
at their deathbeds, and had lived but to plant flowers on their graves
and wear crape for them ever afterwards; and my dark-browed Stephen
Montgomerys had all gone to swell the avenging tide of righteous war, and
had been fatally shot, while I remained to shed tears of unavailing grief
over the locks of raven hair they left with me on the morning of their
departure. But to marry a real, live, omnipresent man--a man, with red
hair, sound lungs, and no wars to go to! My aspiring soul shrank from the
realistic vision.

And all the while a tenderer vision would rise before my eyes, clothed
with its pitiful romance--the Cradlebow, like some sadly out-of-fashion
guest, arising unsolicited out of a half-forgotten dreamland, passing
indeed both the ideal strength of the warlike Stephen and the gentleness
of the saintly Arthur, but, alas! so crude, so unworldly, so ridiculously
poor! And the vision extended and then narrowed helplessly to a home in
one of the forlorn houses in Wallencamp by the sea, with its dingy walls
and bare floors, its general confusion of objects and misery, and my
lord's grand eyes obscured, perchance, behind clouds of tobacco smoke,
while I set the scanty table and fried the briny herrings.

With a shudder for romance, I returned to the contemplation of wealth and
respectability; and took up graciously, once more, the briefly abandoned
idea of duty.

I had often been told that it was my duty to accommodate myself to other
people's views. Perhaps I should accomplish my designs for
self-immolation, and thus, in one sense, effect my highest spiritual
good, by marrying the fisherman and accommodating myself to his
views--ah