nd all this I was leaving. I was going back now to the vast tumult of
the roaring towns, to the lip of mockery, the eye of insincerity, the
hand of hypocrisy, where none may trust a neighbor. And moreover, I
was going back without one look, face to face, into the eyes and the
heart of the woman I had loved, and who, by force of these
extraordinary circumstances had, for a miraculous moment, been thus
set down with me, her lover, in the very surroundings built of
Providence for secrecy and love! Yonder, speeding to her summons, no
doubt hastened, ready to meet her, the man whom she had preferred
above me. And like a beast of burden, driven in the service of these
two, I was plodding on, in the work of leaving paradise and
opportunity, and delivering safe into the hands of another man the
woman whom I loved far more than all else in all the world.

CHAPTER XXXVII

IN WHICH IS PHILOSOPHY; WHICH, HOWEVER, SHOULD NOT BE SKIPPED

We passed on steadily to the northward until mid-afternoon, making no
great headway with one propellor missing, but leaving the main gulf
steadily, and at length, raising, a faint blue loom on the sky, the
long oak-crowned heights of those singular geological formations, the
heights known as "islands", that bound the head of this great bay.
Here the land, springing out of the level marshes and alluvial wet
prairies, thrusts up in long reefs, hundreds of feet above the sea
level. On the eminences grow ancient and mossy forest trees, as well
as much half-tropic brake in the lower levels. Here are wide and rich
acres also, owned as hereditary fees by old proud families, part of
whose wealth comes from their plantations, part from their bay
fisheries, and much from the ancient salt mines which lie under these
singular uplifts above the great alluvial plain. As of right, here
grow mansion homes, and here is lived life as nearly feudal and as
wholly dignified and cultured as any in any land. Ignorant of the
banal word "aristocracy," here, uncounting wealth, unsearching of self
and uncritical of others, simple and fine, folk live as the best
ambition of America might make one long to live, so far above the
vulgar northern scramble for money and display as might make angels
weep for the latter in the comparison.

Perhaps it was Edouard Manning, planter, miner, sportsman, gentleman,
traveler, scholar and host, who first taught me what wealth might
mean, may mean, ought to mean. Always, before now,