d impossible waves.

The others represented similar scenes in a higher rank of society. A
young lady with fair hair, resting her elbows on the ledge of a large
steamship quitting the shore, gazed at the already distant coast with
eyes full of tears and regret. Whom is she leaving behind?

Then the same young lady sitting by an open widow with a view of the
sea, had fainted in an arm-chair; a letter she had dropped lay at her
feet. So he is dead! What despair!

Visitors were generally much moved and charmed by the commonplace pathos
of these obvious and sentimental works. They were at once intelligible
without question or explanation, and the poor women were to be pitied,
though the nature of the grief of the more elegant of the two was not
precisely known. But this very doubt contributed to the sentiment.
She had, no doubt, lost her lover. On entering the room the eye
was immediately attracted to these four pictures, and riveted as if
fascinated. If it wandered it was only to return and contemplate the
four expressions on the faces of the two women, who were as like each
other as two sisters. And the very style of these works, in their
shining frames, crisp, sharp, and highly finished, with the elegance of
a fashion plate, suggested a sense of cleanliness and propriety which
was confirmed by the rest of the fittings. The seats were always in
precisely the same order, some against the wall and some round the
circular centre-table. The immaculately white curtains hung in such
straight and regular pleats that one longed to crumple them a little;
and never did a grain of dust rest on the shade under which the gilt
clock, in the taste of the first empire--a terrestrial globe supported
by Atlas on his knees--looked like a melon left there to ripen.

The two women as they sat down somewhat altered the normal position of
their chairs.

"You have not been out this morning?" asked Mme. Roland.

"No. I must own to being rather tired."

And she spoke as if in gratitude to Jean and his mother, of all the
pleasure she had derived from the expedition and the prawn-fishing.

"I ate my prawns this morning," she added, "and they were excellent. If
you felt inclined we might go again one of these days."

The young man interrupted her:

"Before we start on a second fishing excursion, suppose we complete the
first?"

"Complete it? It seems to me quite finished."

"Nay, madame, I, for my part, caught something on the rocks of S