“Another day has passed, and I think I have heard in my dreams the bursts of music that I would fain have wafted to your waking ears.  Verily the lawyers in New York say well, that I am not Claudius.  Claudius was a thing of angles and books, mathematical and earthy, believing indeed in the greatness of things supernal, but not having tasted thereof.  My beloved, God has given me a new soul to love you with, so great that it seems as though it would break through the walls of my heart and cry aloud to you.  This new Claudius is a man of infinite power to rise above earthly things, above everything that is below you—­and what things that are in earth are not below you, lady mine?

“Again the time has passed, in a dull reluctant fashion, as if he delighted to torment, like the common bore of society.  He lingers and dawdles through his round of hours as though it joyed him to be sluggish.  It has blown a little, and most of the people are sea-sick.  Thank goodness!  I suppose that is a very inhuman sentiment, but the masses of cheerful humanity, gluttonously fattening on the ship’s fare and the smooth sea, were becoming intolerable.  There is not one person on board who looks as though he or she had left a human being behind who had any claim to be regretted.  Did any one of these people ever love?  I suppose so.  I suppose at one time or another most of them have thought they loved some one.  I will not be uncharitable, for they are receiving their just punishment.  Lovers are never sea-sick, but now a hoarse chorus, indescribable and hideous, rises from hidden recesses of the ship.  They are not in love, they are sea-sick.  May it do them all possible good!

“Here we are at last.  I hasten to finish this rambling letter that it may catch the steamer, which, I am told, leaves to-day.  Nine days we have been at sea, and the general impression seems to be that the last part of the passage has been rough.  And now I shall be some weeks in Europe—­I cannot tell how long, but I think the least possible will be three weeks, and the longest six.  I shall know, however, in a fortnight.  My beloved, it hurts me to stop writing—­unreasonable animal that I am, for a letter must be finished in order to be posted.  I pray you, sweetheart, write me a word of comfort and strength in my journeying.  Anything sent to Baring’s will reach me; you cannot know what a line from you would be to me, how I would treasure it as the most sacred of things and the most precious, until we meet.  And so, a bientot, for we must never say ‘goodbye,’ even in jest.  I feel as though I were launching this letter at a venture, as sailors throw a bottle overboard when they fear they are lost.  I have not yet tested the post-office, and I feel a kind of uncertainty as to whether this will reach you.

     “But they are clamouring at my door, and I must go.  Once more, my
     own queen, I love you, ever and only and always.  May all peace and
     rest be with you, and may Heaven keep you from all harm!”