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.
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