“But it is the same,” I continued. “Carry what you see forward—the fisherman passes by the breakwater and looks up into the friendly yellow eye of the lighthouse, and in that eye he sees his own wife setting their table for supper, and around her the warm lights lit in his own house, and then perhaps he remembers what he had forgotten to tell her that very morning when he took up his cap on leaving.”

“And what was that?”

I poked him. “What was it indeed?”

He was silent. “That he loved her.”

I shifted on the seat. “Nay. That he would have soup for his supper, more likely.”

Mr. Ludlow Thomas stared back into the glass. “Yes. That is more likely.”

I shivered beside him. We neither of us spoke again, but watched the bleak weather pelting around. Only after he had unbent his tall frame from the cushion and risen to go downstairs, only after I had heard his step firmly descending from where I sat and then his quick crossing of the front hall to the library did I turn from my seat and look at the place where he had sat, so close, and said he loved me.

1 November

Today winter’s white eye stared unblinking down into the jet-black sea. No matter it has just turned November. Down at the landing, the dinghies have each their various small dances, slapping against the cold, wet wood of the supports holding fast the float to the shore. I wandered down there with a high, wide happiness about this story I am weaving. The hard-edged sky, a block of white above the waves, braced in me the knowledge of my growing power to envision a scene and to tell what I have longed to tell in my soul—truthfully. So long my pen has stood humble in the face of my stormy visions, unable to form what is so clear to me, and yet so unutterable. I felt this morning as though I had been cast clear of the broiling tides, pulling behind me the neat lines of a slim craft able to crest the waves and carry within it a cargo others can see.

(50 drops)

I HAVE COME TO UNDERSTAND A LITTLE ABOUT TIME

In every room, upon every mantel, or standing stern and boldface at the end of the front hall, Time talks, talks, talks. And we tend to him with our delicate fingers, reaching in between the chains and pulling lightly, gently upon the weights inside to set him up again. There is no place in this house free from tock, tock, tock, just as, Reader, there are few places free from the dismal view of water.