of black silk--and a small black mantle, pinned across her
bosom. Soon the doors began to open and shut after their old fashion,
and people came and went as of old on errands of begging or borrowing.

At the table we felt a sense of haste; instead of lingering, as was
our wont, we separated soon, with an indifferent air, as if we were
called by business, not sent away by sorrow. But if our eyes fell on a
certain chair, empty against the wall, a cutting pang was felt,
which was not at all concealed; for there were sudden breaks in our
commonplace talk, which diverged into wandering channels, betraying
the tension of feeling.

Many weeks passed, through which I endured an aching, aimless
melancholy. My thoughts continually drifted through the vacuum in
our atmosphere, and returned to impress me with a disbelief in the
enjoyment, or necessity of keeping myself employed with the keys of an
instrument, which, let me strike ever so cunningly, it was certain I
could never obtain mastery over.

One day I went to walk by the shore, for the first time since my
return. When I set my foot on the ground, the intolerable light of the
brilliant day blazed through me; I was luminously dark, for it blinded
me. Picking my way over the beach, left bare by the tide, with my eyes
fixed downward till I could see, I reached the point between our
house and the lighthouse and turned toward the sea, inhaling its cool
freshness. I climbed out to a flat, low rock, on the point; it was dry
in the sun, and the weeds hanging from its sides were black and crisp;
I put my woolen shawl on it, and stretched myself along its edge.
Little pools meshed from the sea by the numberless rocks round me
engrossed my attention. How white and pellucid was the shallow near
me--no shadow but the shadow of my face bending over it--nothing to
ripple its surface, but my imperceptible breath! By and by a bunch of
knotted wrack floated in from the outside and lodged in a crevice; a
minute creature with fringed feet darted from it and swam across
it. After the knotted wrack came the fragment of a green and silky
substance, delicate enough to have been the remnant of a web, woven
in the palace of Circe. "There must be a current," I thought, "which
sends them here." And I watched the inlet for other waifs; but nothing
more came. Eye-like bubbles rose from among the fronds of the knotted
wrack, and, sailing on uncertain voyages, broke one by one and were
wrecked to nothin