"I have read and heard that splendid passage many times, but never with the meaning and power which your voice has lent to the poet's words," said Dexter, gazing with admiration upon his wife.
He sat down beside her, and took her hand in his. Her eyes wandered to his face, and lingered there as if she were searching the lineaments for a sign of something that her heart could take hold upon and cling to. And it was even so; for she felt that she needed strength and protection in an hour of surely coming trial. A feeble sigh and a drooping of the eyelids attested her disappointment. And yet as he leaned towards her she did not sit more erect, but rather suffered her body to incline to him. He still retained her hand, and she permitted him to toy with it, even slightly returning the pressure he gave.
"You shall be my teacher in the love of nature." He spoke with a glow of true feeling. "The lesson of this evening I shall never forget. Old ocean will always wear a different aspect in my eyes."
"Nature," replied Mrs. Dexter, "is not a mere dead symbol.—It is something more—an outbirth from loving principles—the body of a creating soul. The sea, upon whose restless surface we are gazing, is something more than a briny fluid, bearing ships upon its bosom—something more than a mirror for the arching heavens—something more than a symbol of immensity and eternity. There is a truth in nature far deeper, more divine, and of higher significance."
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."