Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/181

 to the young fashion-plate artist, and walked upon the waters. And the oily sea breathed gigantically with the stirrings of its infinite life. Damp and cold, having no one to talk to, she felt at first a curious sense of unreality. Sky, sea, and between them the ship and the human particles upborne on its wooden decks. 'It will be like this when I am old,' she thought; 'nothing real and nothing matters, and everything floats by, but does not stop to possess you. I see the people and the waves, but they seem to float away from me.' She wrote assiduously, long paragraphs of impressions, and her pencil would droop in her fingers. 'That is Labrador,' she thought, 'but it is lead-colored like the sea and sky and isn't real. I suppose I am lonely and homesick. Gracious, I do hope not seasick!' Phrases stirred feebly through her mind. 'That at least has always been here...always. The Northmen liked the sea because it made them feel sad. I like to feel sad. Why do I wake up at night sometimes, so frightened, and think of death and even suicide? But I've liked to live so much. Probably that is why I could not bear to see life turn grey and bitter like this. I'd rather not live than not enjoy. Oh, dear, that is not Christian! That is why I start up at night so afraid. What am I building old age upon? I do not want it. That's what people mean by the necessity of children. But I feel no need. Will I when it is too late? When I sit as I sit to-day with no one to talk to and the whole world grey? And I grey and lonely as the gulls that follow us mewing like cats. I must have loved Anthony, for my face has