ir joint stories which Mr
Powell did not know. The chapter in it he was opening to me, the
sea-chapter, with such new personages as the sentimental and apoplectic
chief mate and the morose steward, however astounding to him in its
detached condition was much more so to me as a member of a series,
following the chapter outside the Eastern Hotel in which I myself had
played my part. In view of her declarations and my sage remarks it was
very unexpected. She had meant well, and I had certainly meant well
too. Captain Anthony--as far as I could gather from little Fyne--had
meant well. As far as such lofty words may be applied to the obscure
personages of this story we were all filled with the noblest sentiments
and intentions. The sea was there to give them the shelter of its
solitude free from the earth's petty suggestions. I could well marvel
in myself, as to what had happened.

I hope that if he saw it, Mr Powell forgave me the smile of which I was
guilty at that moment. The light in the cabin of his little cutter was
dim. And the smile was dim too. Dim and fleeting. The girl's life had
presented itself to me as a tragi-comical adventure, the saddest thing
on earth, slipping between frank laughter and unabashed tears. Yes, the
saddest facts and the most common, and, being common perhaps the most
worthy of our unreserved pity.

The purely human reality is capable of lyrism but not of abstraction.
Nothing will serve for its understanding but the evidence of rational
linking up of characters and facts. And beginning with Flora de Barral,
in the light of my memories I was certain that she at least must have
been passive; for that is of necessity the part of women, this waiting
on fate which some of them, and not the most intelligent, cover up by
the vain appearances of agitation. Flora de Barral was not
exceptionally intelligent but she was thoroughly feminine. She would be
passive (and that does not mean inanimate) in the circumstances, where
the mere fact of being a woman was enough to give her an occult and
supreme significance. And she would be enduring which is the essence of
woman's visible, tangible power. Of that I was certain. Had she not
endured already? Yet it is so true that the germ of destruction lies in
wait for us mortals, even at the very source of our strength, that one
may die of too much endurance as well as of too little of it.

"Such was my train of thought. And I was mindful also