er. Though it be
only for one eternal instant. Touch me not only in my dreams, but in
life. Turn life itself into the dream at last. Oh, hold me fast, my
boy, my boy..."

"Hush, hush, child, I'm holding you..."

"You wept."

"Oh, did you see? I turned my head away."

"Why did you weep?"

"Because you thought I had misjudged you."

"Then I misjudged you."

"But I did not weep for that."

"Would you, if I misjudged you?"

"It would not be so hard to bear."

"And you went away with tears and brought me the corn of your mill."

"And you took it with smiles, and gave me the shell of your seas."

"Your corn rustled through my head."

"Your shell whispers at my heart."

"You shall always hear it whispering there. It will tell you what I can
never tell you, or only tell you in other ways."

"Of your life on the sea? Of the countries over the water? Of storms
and islands and flashing birds, and strange bright flowers? Of all the
lands and life I've never seen, and dream of all wrong? Will it tell me
those things?--of your life that I don't know."

"Yes, perhaps. But I could tell you of that life."

"Of what other life will it tell me?"

"Of my life that you do know."

"Is there one?"

"Look in your own heart."

"I am looking."

"And listen."

"Yes."

"What do you hear?"

"Oh, boy, the whispering of your shell!"

"Oh, child, the rustling of your corn!"

Oh, maids! the grinding of the millstones.

This is only a little part of what she heard. But if I told you the
whole we should rise from the story gray-headed. For every day she
carried her boy's shell to the grinding stones, and stood there while
it spoke against her heart. And at other times of the day it lay in her
pocket, while she swept and cooked and spun, and she saw shadows of her
mill-dreams in the cobwebs and the rising steam, and heard echos of
them in her singing kettle and her singing wheel. And at night it lay
on her pillow against her ear, and the voice of the waters went through
her sleep.

So the years slipped one by one, and she grew from a girl into a young
woman; and presently passed out of her youth. But her eyes and her
heart were still those of a girl, for life had touched them with
nothing but a girl's dream. And it is not time that leaves its traces
on the spirit, whatever it may do to the body. Her father meanwhile
grew harder and more tyrannical with years. There was little for him to
fear now that any man w