She paused, and for some moments her thoughts seemed floating away into a world, the real things of which our coarser forms but feebly represent.

“It must be so.  I feel that it is so; yet what to you seems clear as the sunbeams, hides itself from me in dusky shadows.  But say on Jessie.  Your words are pleasant to my ears.”

Mrs. Dexter seemed a little surprised at this language, for she turned her eyes from the sea to his face, and looked at him with a questioning gaze for some moments.

“This world is not the real world,” she said, speaking earnestly and gazing at him intently to see how far his thought reflected hers.

“Is not this real?” Dexter asked, raising the hand of his wife and looking down upon it.  “I call it a real hand.”

“And I,” said Mrs. Dexter, smiling, “call it only the appearance of a hand; it is the real hand that vitalizes and gives it power.  This will decay—­this appearance fade—­but the real hand of my spirit will live on, immortal in its power as the human soul of which it makes a part.”

“Into what strange labyrinths your mind is wandering Jessie!” said Mr. Dexter, a slight shade of disapproval in his voice.  “I am afraid you are losing yourself.”

“Rather say that I have been lost, and am finding myself in open paths, with the blue sky instead of forest foliage above me.”

“Your language is a myth, Jessie.  I never heard of your being lost.  To me you have been ever present, walking in the sunlight, a divine reality.  Not the mere appearance of a woman; but a real woman, and my wife.  Pray do not lose yourself now!  Do not recede from an actual flesh and blood existence into some world of dim philosophy whither I cannot go.  I am not ready for your translation.”

Mr. Dexter was half playful, half serious.  His reply disappointed his wife.  Her manner, warmer than usual, took on a portion of its old reserve.  But she went on speaking.

“The immortal soul, spiritual in its essence, yet organized in all its minutest parts—­cannot attain its full stature unless it receives immortal food.  The aliments of mere sensual life are for the body, and the mind’s lowest constituents of being; and they who are content to feed on husks must sort with the common herd.  I have higher aspirations, my husband!  I see within and above the animal and sensuous a real world of truth and goodness, where, and where only, the soul’s immortal desires can be satisfied.  With the key in my hand shall I not enter?  The common air is too thick for me.  I must perish or rise into purer atmospheres.”

Mrs. Dexter paused, conscious that her husband did not appreciate her meanings.  He was listening intently, and striving apparently after them; but to him only the things of sense were real; and he was not able to comprehend how lasting pleasure was to flow from the intellectual and spiritual.  He did not answer, and she lapsed into silence; all the fine enthusiasm that had filled her countenance so full of a living beauty giving place to a cold, calm exterior.  She had hoped to quicken her husband’s sluggish perceptions, and to create in his mind an incipient love for the pure and beautiful things after which her own mind was beginning to aspire.