changed. The awful bearded face, the huge shadowy hand, did not
fade from her thought; but they became fantastically blended with
the larger and vaguer notion of something that filled the world
and reached to the stars,--something diaphanous and
incomprehensible like the invisible air, omnipresent and
everlasting like the high blue of heaven ....


II.

... She began to learn the life of the coast.

With her acquisition of another tongue, there came to her also
the understanding of many things relating to the world of the sea
She memorized with novel delight much that was told her day by
day concerning the nature surrounding her,--many secrets of the
air, many of those signs of heaven which the dwellers in cities
cannot comprehend because the atmosphere is thickened and made
stagnant above them--cannot even watch because the horizon is
hidden from their eyes by walls, and by weary avenues of trees
with whitewashed trunks. She learned, by listening, by asking,
by observing also, how to know the signs that foretell wild
weather:--tremendous sunsets, scuddings and bridgings of
cloud,--sharpening and darkening of the sea-line,--and the shriek
of gulls flashing to land in level flight, out of a still
transparent sky,--and halos about the moon.

She learned where the sea-birds, with white bosoms and brown
wings, made their hidden nests of sand,--and where the cranes
waded for their prey,--and where the beautiful wild-ducks,