“Beauty, the secret of the universe,
The thought that gives the soul eternal peace.”
was the quotation most frequently on her lips.
She had seen so much more of the world and its glories than I, and her understanding of nature was a marvel to me. She taught me to see colors that I had been blind to before. Sometimes she brought up her materials and sketched, while I looked on and loved her. When she would let me I photographed her. One day I ventured to show her some verses that I had written, and the fact that she really seemed to care for them gave me a higher opinion of us both.
And the sea racing past made a fine accompaniment to these pleasant things. She liked to watch the surge along the side and listen to its music. So did I, and often together we leaned over the rail to watch and hear it rush by.
We discussed metaphysics, and talked of life, and love, and death. Remembering Chauncey Gale’s advice, I was careful to avoid the personal note at such times. Ferratoni had touched now and then upon his theories in these matters, and these suggested speculations of our own. I was not displeased to find that Edith Gale did not quite accord with, or perhaps altogether grasp, his filmy philosophies. I preferred that she should be less ethereal—what she was, in fact—a splendid reality of flesh and blood and soul, with a love of all the joys of earth and sky. The clouds scudding across the blue, the white joy of the sunlit sails, the smash of the spray over the bow, a merry game of shuffle-board, and even hop-scotch—these things gave her life and sustenance—and then, at the end of the day, came the good dinner, and the untroubled sleep of a healthy child.
IX.
ADMONITION AND COUNSEL.
Our progress southward was hurried. We had touched at Charleston for a full supply of coal, but we were sailing under canvas only. It was still bleak winter below Cape Horn, and we did not wish to enter those somber seas before November, the beginning of the Antarctic spring.
Sometimes Edith Gale and I drew steamer chairs to the extreme bow of the boat, and looking away to the horizon, imagined the land of our quest lying just beyond. At night, from this point, we watched the new constellations of the tropics rising from the sea, and those of the North falling back, behind us.
Chauncey Gale and Ferratoni frequently joined us, and at times I was constrained through courtesy to leave Ferratoni and Edith Gale together. Perhaps it was not quite wise—the stars and sea form a dangerous combination to a man like Ferratoni.