lided fancy like the cries of
suffering spirits. The seaboard population on the coast of Brittany have
an ocean superstition which exactly answers to this interpretation of
the peculiar melancholy of the waves, soughing and pining along the
beach at night.

We liked this solitude at first. It left us entirely to ourselves, which
was precisely the ideal life we had yearned for. The same objects every
day in our walks--the same objects every moment to look out upon from
our windows--the same faces, few or none, on the desolate sands--the
very same sky, with hardly any variation, although the slightest
fluctuation in the points of the wind, or the current of the clouds,
produced a sensation! It suited us at first, for we had no space in our
thoughts for external objects, and the total absence of all excitement
threw us more in upon ourselves. But even then it was sad. Such days of
idleness--such idle dalliance--such a happy negation of all action and
effort! How long was this to last? or rather, how long could such a life
last for two people who felt within themselves aspirations for movement
and results of some kind?

Although we hid ourselves in this retirement for several months, I did
not consider it necessary to adopt the further security of changing my
name. I yielded to the prudence of avoiding a collision with the dwarf,
if he still lived; but I shrank from the meanness of denying myself to
any demand that might be made upon us, should my retreat be discovered.
All links between us and London were broken. For three months, Astraea
had had no communication with any body. Her friends and relations might
have supposed that she was dead, which she wished them to think. She
knew that she was dead to the world, and that she should never re-enter
it; and she only looked forward to the moment when she might put her
house in order, and sit down for the rest of her life in tranquillity
and obscurity. In the beginning, this was a gladdening prospect to her;
her high spirits and bounding enthusiasm sped onward into the future,
and filled it with images of love in a state of beatitude; but as time
advanced, and the dreary sea fell dismally on her ears, and the long
walks on the beach had lost their freshness, and there was nothing to be
read in each others' faces, which had not been read there ten thousand
times over--except, perhaps, an increasing look of care and
anxiety--this prospect of settling down, alone, away from huma