an who was sustaining an habitual expression of
command and self-possession by the mere energy of her will, and who,
when that failed her, would break down at once, and be shattered, like a
vase, in the fall.

The winter was deepening round us, and drifting gales ran shudderingly
along the bleak strand, and rising over the waters, lashed them into
fury, till they broke upon the ears like distant thunder. Sometimes
there was an epic grandeur in these scenes, when a rush of black clouds,
descending upon the sea, blotted out its mighty palpitations, burying
it, and the masses that floated on its surface, under one vast pall,
which hung there like a curtain, till the lightning rent it open and
disclosed an horizon of fire. But these occasional changes, although
they imparted a little variety to the out-of-door scene, only helped to
make our in-door life more _triste_, by shutting us up half the day in
the house.

The seasons are all-important to two people who are living apart from
the world. It is surprising how much depends upon their
fluctuations--how the temper, the health, the desire of life and
capacity of enjoyment, are affected by the aspect of the morning, the
turn of the day at noon, the intermittent shower, the shifting of the
wind, the cold, the heat. When people are occupied, these things have
little influence upon them, and very often none at all. But to the
listless and idle--especially when they are constrained into idleness
against their inclinations--the slightest incident that breaks the dull
monotony of the day is magnified into an event.

What were we to do in these short, dismal days, and long, shivering
nights? Books? Newspapers? We had both, and tired of them. The power of
abstraction necessary for the enjoyment of books was no longer at our
command. We could not abstract ourselves from our own thoughts to enter
into the political controversies of history, or the fictitious sorrows
of the novel or romance. The newspaper had some attraction at first. We
looked out for the names of people we knew. Births, marriages, and
deaths, which, I believe, I had never read in my life before, were now
explored with breathless curiosity. But week by week, and month by
month, our curiosity diminished; and as we became more and more divorced
from society, and our personal interest in it fell away, the newspaper
lost its charm. It lay sometimes untouched upon the table. Astraea
relinquished it first; and although I