was much more so to me as a member of a series, following the chapter
outside the Eastern Hotel in which I myself had played my part. In view
of her declarations and my sage remarks it was very unexpected. She had
meant well, and I had certainly meant well too. Captain Anthony--as far
as I could gather from little Fyne--had meant well. As far as such lofty
words may be applied to the obscure personages of this story we were all
filled with the noblest sentiments and intentions. The sea was there to
give them the shelter of its solitude free from the earth's petty
suggestions. I could well marvel in myself, as to what had happened.

I hope that if he saw it, Mr. Powell forgave me the smile of which I was
guilty at that moment. The light in the cabin of his little cutter was
dim. And the smile was dim too. Dim and fleeting. The girl's life had
presented itself to me as a tragi-comical adventure, the saddest thing on
earth, slipping between frank laughter and unabashed tears. Yes, the
saddest facts and the most common, and, being common perhaps the most
worthy of our unreserved pity.

The purely human reality is capable of lyrism but not of abstraction.
Nothing will serve for its understanding but the evidence of rational
linking up of characters and facts. And beginning with Flora de Barral,
in the light of my memories I was certain that she at least must have
been passive; for that is of necessity the part of women, this waiting on
fate which some of them, and not the most intelligent, cover up by the
vain appearances of agitation. Flora de Barral was not exceptionally
intelligent but she was thoroughly feminine. She would be passive (and
that does not mean inanimate) in the circumstances, where the mere fact
of being a woman was enough to give her an occult and supreme
significance. And she would be enduring which is the essence of woman's
visible, tangible power. Of that I was certain. Had she not endured
already? Yet it is so true that the germ of destruction lies in wait for
us mortals, even at the very source of our strength, that one may die of
too much endurance as well as of too little of it.

Such was my train of thought. And I was mindful also of my first view of
her--toying or perhaps communing in earnest with the possibilities of a
precipice. But I did not ask Mr. Powell anxiously what had happened to
Mrs. Anthony in the end. I let him go on in his own way feeling that no
matter what s