As the days shortened into winter, and the howling winds came early in the evenings, and drove us home a dreary hour or two before dinner, to get through the interval as well as we could by the fireside, our reserve on personal matters gradually wore off, and it became a relief to us to talk freely upon the topics which we had hitherto been reluctant to approach. These wintry conversations, leading to nothing, yet wonderfully animated by bitterness of spirit, showed the change that Astræa's character was undergoing. She was more easily chafed by contradiction than she used to be, and dwelt more upon words, and small points, and trifles which formerly she would have hurried over with indifference; conversation degenerated, I could hardly tell how, into discussion; and notwithstanding the ascendency and elevation of her language and her manner, I could see that there was less real strength behind, and that beneath the calmness which still sat loftily upon her, there was much secret and repressed agitation. Sometimes she presented to me the idea of a woman who was sustaining an habitual expression of command and self-possession by the mere energy of her will, and who, when that failed her, would break down at once, and be shattered, like a vase, in the fall. The winter was deepening round us, and drifting gales ran shudderingly along the bleak strand, and rising over the waters, lashed them into fury, till they broke upon the ears like distant thunder. Sometimes there was an epic grandeur in these scenes, when a rush of black clouds, descending upon the sea, blotted out its mighty palpitations, burying it, and the masses that floated on its surface, under one vast pall, which hung there like a curtain, till the lightning rent it open and disclosed an horizon of fire. But these occasional changes, although they imparted a little variety to the out-of-door scene, only helped to make our in-door life more _triste_, by shutting us up half the day in the house. The seasons are all-important to two people who are living apart from the world. It is surprising how much depends upon their fluctuations--how the temper, the health, the desire of life and capacity of enjoyment, are affected by the aspect of the morning, the turn of the day at noon, the intermittent shower, the shifting of the wind, the cold, the heat. When people are occupied, these things have little influence upon them, and very often none at all. But to the listless and idle--especially when they are constrained into idleness against their inclinations--the slightest incident that breaks the dull monotony of the day is magnified into an event.