creeping off alone would hum an air
from the score, thanking God for giving me this thoroughly pure, holy
message to utter in the world. It was the redemption of my soul from
these vulgar taints: it was a sort of mortgage I held on the eternal
truth and life. Yet, when no one told me of their plans, when I saw they
all held some secret back from me, watching me constantly and furtively,
when Jacky buzzed about my husband all day, whispering, laughing,
cooking his favorite omelet for breakfast, bringing his slippers at
night,--it was like so many sharp stings through stupor. "It's the
woman's flesh of me!" I used to say bitterly, when I would have been
glad to meanly creep after them, to cuddle Teddy up in my arms, or to
lean my head on his father's knees. "I can live it down. I have 'a manly
soul.'" For it was part of my creed that Nature was something given us
to be lived down in fulfilling our mission.

We went by the evening's boat to Newport. I saw M. Vaux in the outer
cabin, as we passed through: he nodded familiarly when Doctor Manning's
back was turned, without removing his cigar.

It was stifling below, with the smell of frying meat and numerous
breaths. We went on deck, my husband drawing a bench around to shelter
me from the keen wind across the bow, and wrapping my flannel hood
closer to my throat when we drifted out within scent of salt water. It
was a night that waited and listened: the sea silent and threatening, a
few yellow, dogged, low breakers running in at long intervals; now and
then a rasping gurgle of wind from shore, as of one who held his breath;
some thin, brown clouds ragged along the edges of the cold sky, ready
for flight.

I sat there thinking how well the meaning of the sea suited my soul that
night. It was no work of God's praising Him continually: it was the
eternal protest and outcry against Fate,--chained, helpless,
unappealing. Let the mountains and the sunshine and the green fields
chant an anthem, if they would; but for this solitary sea, with its
inarticulate cry, surely all the pain and impatience of the world's six
thousand years had gone down and found a voice in that. Having thus
cleared to myself the significance of the sea in Nature, I was trying to
define its exact effect upon my own temperament, (a favorite mental
exercise of my father's,) when my husband touched my shoulder.

"I'll go down and smoke a bit, Hetty dear, and leave you with Jacky.
She's as good guard as a t