was too mixed for him to take her amid such scenes. Thus, while this
thriving manufacturer got a great deal of change and sea-air out of his
sojourn here, the life, external at least, of Ella was monotonous enough,
and mainly consisted in passing a certain number of hours each day in
bathing and walking up and down a stretch of shore. But the poetic
impulse having again waxed strong, she was possessed by an inner flame
which left her hardly conscious of what was proceeding around her.

She had read till she knew by heart Trewe's last little volume of verses,
and spent a great deal of time in vainly attempting to rival some of
them, till, in her failure, she burst into tears. The personal element
in the magnetic attraction exercised by this circumambient,
unapproachable master of hers was so much stronger than the intellectual
and abstract that she could not understand it. To be sure, she was
surrounded noon and night by his customary environment, which literally
whispered of him to her at every moment; but he was a man she had never
seen, and that all that moved her was the instinct to specialize a
waiting emotion on the first fit thing that came to hand did not, of
course, suggest itself to Ella.

In the natural way of passion under the too practical conditions which
civilization has devised for its fruition, her husband's love for her had
not survived, except in the form of fitful friendship, any more than, or
even so much as, her own for him; and, being a woman of very living
ardours, that required sustenance of some sort, they were beginning to
feed on this chancing material, which was, indeed, of a quality far
better than chance usually offers.

One day the children had been playing hide-and-seek in a closet, whence,
in their excitement, they pulled out some clothing. Mrs. Hooper