ng light clouds above the Seine, like patches of wool; but most,
the peculiar life that seemed to impregnate the place itself, holding
her, as it were, to her own precise niche and work in the world,--the
sharply managed lights, the skins, trappings, her disguises on the
walls, the stables outside, and the finished work before us, instinct
with vigor and an observation as patient as keen. I remembered how some
one had quoted her as saying, "Any woman can be a wife or mother, but
this is my work alone."

I, too, had my gift: but one. But again the quick shiver of ecstasy ran
through me;--it was my power, my wand with which to touch the world, my
"_Vollmachtsbrief zum Gluecke_": was I to give it unused back to God? I
could sing: not that only; I could compose music,--the highest
soul-utterance. I remember clutching my hands up to my throat, as if
holding safe the power that should release me, suffer me to grow again,
and looking across the oil-lamp on the table at my husband. I _had_ been
called, then,--set apart to a mission; it was a true atom of the
creative power that had fired my brain; my birth had placed me on a
fitting plane of self-development, and I had thrust it all aside--for
what? A mess of weakest pottage,--a little love, silly rides behind
Tinker, petting and paltering such as other women's souls grew imbecile
without. It was the consciousness of this that had grown slowly on me in
the year just gone; I had put my husband from me day by day because of
it; it had reached its intolerable climax to-night. Well, it was fact:
no fancy. My nature was differently built from others: I could look now
at my husband, and see the naked truth about us both. Two middle-aged
people, with inharmonious intellects: tastes and habits jarring at every
step, clenched together only by faith in a vague whim or fever of the
blood called love. Better apart: we were too old for fevers. If I
remained with Doctor Manning, my _role_ was outlined plain to the end:
years of cooking, stitching, scraping together of cents: it was the fate
of thousands of married women without means, to grovel every year nearer
the animal life, to grow niggardly and common. Better apart.

As I thought that, he laid Teddy down, and came towards me,--the usual
uncertain, anxious half-smile on his face with which he regarded me.

"I am sure they will all like my old home, now, lads and all. I'm glad
of that. Sure of all but you, Hester. But you say nothing."