Doesn’t all that sound as if I were a selfish little pig?  Well, some day I shall enjoy them all—­but now—­my heart is crying—­and Leila, with her little white face, hurts.  Mrs. Barry Ballard!  Shall I ever get used to hearing her called that?  It seems to set her apart from little Leila Dick, so that when I hear people speak to her, I am always startled and surprised.

And now—­what are you doing?  Are you still planting little gardens, and talking to your boy—­talking to your sad people?  Cousin Patty has told me of your letter to your bishop, who was so kind during your—­trouble—­and of his answer—­and of your hope that some day you may have a little church in the sand-hills, and preach instead of teach.

Surely that would make all of your dreams come true, all of our dreams, for I have dreamed too—­that this might come.

Sometimes as I lie here, I shut my eyes, and I seem to see you in that circle of young pines, and I pretend that I am listening; that you are saying things to me, as you say them to those poor people in the pines—­and now and then I can make myself believe that you have really spoken, that your voice has reached across the miles.  And so I have your little sermons all to myself—­out here at sea, with all the blue distance between us—­but I listen, listen—­just the same.

In the Fog.

Out of the sunshine of yesterday came the heavy mists of to-day.  The sea slips under us in silver swells.  Everybody is wrapped to the chin, and Porter has just stopped to ask me if I want something hot sent up.  I told him “no,” and sent him on to Leila.  I like this still world, and the gray ghosts about the deck.  Delilah has just sailed by in a beautiful smoke-colored costume—­with her inevitable knot of heliotrope—­a phantom lady, like a lovely dream.

Did I tell you that a very distinguished and much titled gentleman wants to marry Delilah, and that he is waiting now for her answer?  Porter thinks she will say “yes.”  But Leila and I don’t.  We are sure that she will find her fate in Colin.  He dominates her; he dives beneath the surface and brings up the real Delilah, not the cool, calculating Delilah that we once knew, but the lovely, gracious lady that she now is.  It is as if he had put a new soul inside of the worldly shell that was once Delilah.  Yet there is never a sign between them of anything but good comradeship.  Grace says that Colin is following the fashionable policy of watchful waiting—­but I’m not sure.  I fancy that they will both wake up suddenly to what they feel, and then it will be quite wonderful to see them.

Porter doesn’t believe in the waking-up process.  He says that love is a growth.  That people must know each other for years and years, so that each can understand the faults and virtues of the other.  But to me it seems that love is a flame, illumining everything in a moment.

Porter came while I was writing that—­and made me walk with him up and down, up and down.  He was afraid I might get chilled.  Of course he means to be kind, but I don’t like to have him tell me that I must “make an effort”—­it gives me a sort of Mrs. Dombey feeling.  I don’t wonder that she just curled up and died to get rid of the trouble of living.