"Who knows of this besides you? You don't mind telling me that much?"
"No one knows it, I think; no person told me, and I have told no one. You seem to have more fever; can you not sleep?"
"Not with all this equinoctial storm raging, and the tide you told me of coming up with the wind."
She looked decidedly worse. Mr. Axtell let her have her own way. I thought it wise to follow his leading, and I asked,—
"What tide do you mean? You cannot hear the sea, and it isn't time for the equinoctial gale."
This question seemed to have quieted Miss Axtell beyond thought of reply. She did not speak again until the Sabbath-day had begun. Then, at the very point where she had ceased, she recommenced.
"It is a pity to let the sea in on the fertile fields of your young life," she said; "but this tide,—it is not that that is now flowing in on the far-away beach of Redcliff. It is the tide of emotion, that some one day in life begins to rise in the human heart,—and, oh, what a strange, wondrous thing it is! There are Bay-of-Fundy tides, and the uniform tides, and the tideless waters that rest around Pacific Isles; and no mortal knoweth the cause of their rise or fall. So in human hearts: some must endure the great throbbing surges that are so hard coming against one poor heart with nothing but the earth to rest upon, and yet must stand fast; then there are the many, the blessed congregation of hearts, that are only stirred by moderate, even-flowing emotions, that never rise over a tide-line, behind which the congregation are quite secure, and stand and censure the souls striving and toiling in waves that they only look upon, but never—no, never—feel. Is this right, Miss Percival?"
"It seems not," I said; "but the tideless hearts, what of them?"
"Oh, they are the hardest of all. Think! Imagine one of those serene, iridescent rings of land, moored close beside the cliff, at which the waves never rest from beating. Could the one forever at peace, with leave from wind and wave to grow its verdure and twine its tendrils just where it would,—could it feel for the life-points against which the Gulf-Stream only now and then sent up a cheering bit of warmth, whilst the soul of the cliff saw its own land of greenness, only far, far away over the waters, but could not attain unto it, not whilst north-land winds blow or the earth-time endures?"
Miss Axtell ceased, and the same fixed, absorbed expression came to her. She looked as she had done on the night, four days since, when I came in at that door for the first time. I thought of the question her brother had asked me concerning the turning of the key; and crossing the room, I turned it.