ad not changed. She loved her husband
with her whole heart and soul: her devotion was as true and constant
as she herself could have wished it to be when she dreamed of the
duties of a wife in the days of her maidenhood. But all around her was
changed. She had no longer the old freedom--the old delight in living
from day to day--the active work, and the enjoyment of seeing where
she could help and how she could help the people around her. When,
as if by the same sort of instinct that makes a wild animal retain
in captivity the habits which were necessary to its existence when
it lived in freedom, she began to find out the circumstances of such
unfortunate people as were in her neighborhood, some little solace was
given to her; but these people were not friends to her, as the poor
folk of Borvabost had been. She knew, too, that her husband would be
displeased if he found her talking with a washerwoman over her family
matters, or even advising one of her own servants about the disposal
of her wages; so that, while she concealed nothing from him, these
things nevertheless had to be done exclusively in his absence. And was
she in so doing really making herself ridiculous? Did he consider her
ridiculous? Or was it not merely the false and enervating influences
of the indolent society in which he lived that had poisoned his mind,
and drawn him away from her as though into another world?

Alas! if he were in this other world, was not she quite alone? What
companionship was there possible between her and the people in this
new and strange land into which she had ventured? As she lay on the
bed, with her head hidden down in the darkness, the pathetic wail of
the captive Jews seemed to come and go through the bitterness of her
thoughts, like some mournful refrain: "By the rivers of Babylon, there
we sat down; yea we wept when we remembered Zion." She almost heard
the words, and the reply that rose up in her heart was a great
yearning to go back to her own land, so that her eyes were filled with
tears in thinking of it, and she lay and sobbed there in the dusk.
Would not the old man living all by himself in that lonely island be
glad to see his little girl back again in the old house? And she would
sing to him as she used to sing, not as she had been singing to those
people whom her husband knew. "For there they that carried us away
captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us
mirth, saying, Sing us one of