SCUED BY THE CRADLEBOW.

The ship in which the Cradlebow expected to take flight was to sail from
New Bedford on the twentieth of June. Meantime, having abjured my
friendly relations with Rebecca, and missing the quiet sustenance
hitherto supplied my vanity in the girl's thoughtful devotion, I found a
measure of relief for my wounded spirit in the companionship of this
other--my boyish and ardent ex-pupil.

Many times, after my last interview with Rebecca, had I regretted that I
did not leave Wallencamp at the close of the first term. The school grew
continually more irksome to me. I was not so strong as when I had first
undertaken it, and no longer overlooked the discomforts of my situation
in the delight I had then experienced in its novelty. Often I longed to
get away from it all, to rid myself abruptly of the perplexities and
distasteful duties which bound me; and yet, all the while, there was
a truer impulse, a deeper longing within me, to stay. Had I not been, all
my life so far, forsaking my unfinished tasks, quitting an object as soon
as it seemed any the less attractive. I willed to stay, and labored,
still blindly, under the conviction that my regenerating work among the
Wallencampers (not theirs in me; ah, no!) was not yet accomplished.

Toward Rebecca I had not softened. I was bitterly disappointed in her.
She had been the formless, pliable clay, on which I purposed to prove my
pet theories for development and culture. I had taken her as a perfectly
fresh and untainted being, naively unconscious even, of the elements,
either good or bad, of which her own nature was composed, waiting only
for the hand of a wise and skillful modeller, like myself, to bring her
up to the highest condition of manners and morals.

This elegant superstructure, a purely mental product of my own, had
fallen away, revealing the erring, passionate nature beneath. But, deeply
as I mourned the fall of my idol, I felt still more keenly a sense of
personal injury, because the inner structure on which I had been
building, had not spoken out and said, "I shall contaminate you. I am not
fit for the touch, of your fine hands."

Clearly there could no longer be any sympathy between Rebecca and me. I
avoided any occasion for private interview with the girl. Meeting her
casually in the lane, or at the neighbors' houses, I acknowledged her
presence with a nod or a smile, colder, I knew, than as if I had ignored
her utterly.

She understoo