-coat: I remember I saw it, and
wondered feebly if Jacky would attend to it,--if my child, when she was
a woman, would be careful and tender with her father. Meantime my
husband was talking in his cheerfullest, heartiest voice.

"Coming here makes me feel as if the old boy-time had come back, Hetty.
Rob and I have been planning out our new life, and the sea and the fresh
air and the very houses seemed to join in the talk, and help me on as
they used to do then. I'll begin all new: just as then. Only now"----

He put his hand on my shawl with a motion that had infinite meaning and
affection in it. The little steamer at the wharf swayed and rocked. Her
freight was nearly all on deck: I had but a few moments more,--that is,
if I meant to be free.

"We are going down to the hotel for a few minutes,--business, Hetty," he
said. "Will you wait for us here? or are you afraid to be alone?

"No, I'm not afraid to be alone. It is better for me."

"Good bye, then. Come, Rob."

I did not say good-bye. Even then, I think I did not know what I had
resolved. I thrust my fingers deeper into the wet tuft of grass, heard
the long dash of the breakers on the beach, looked at the square black
figure of Robert Manning as it went slowly up the sandy road into the
street. At the other, taller and more bent, beside it, I did not once
look. I wiped the clammy moisture off my face and throat.

"It's the woman's flesh of me," I said. "There is better stuff in me
than that. I will go now, and fulfil my calling."

On the wharf, as I went creeping along, I met Monsieur. He offered me
his fat little arm, with smiles and congratulations, and handed me
hurriedly over the plank on to the deck. In a moment the steamer was
puffing out of harbor.

* * * * *

I was to play Marian in my own opera. God had given me a power of
head-work, skill for a certain mission, and I was going to perform it.
The vast, vague substance on which I was to act was brought before me
to-night, palpable,--the world, posterity, time; how did I call it? But,
somehow, it was not what I had dreamed of since my babyhood up yonder in
Concord. Nothing was vast or vague. I was looking into a little glass in
a black-painted frame, and saw the same Mrs. Manning, with the same high
cheekbones, the yellow mole on the upper lip, the sorrowful brown eyes:
dressed in tulle now, though, the angular arms and shoulders bare, and
coated with chalk, a pat of