Now that that experience is over, with the many others, we are at sea and quiet again, with one tranquil day just like the other. "What a honeymoon journey it would make, Charlotte!" said Dolly one moonlight evening on deck. "It is so difficult to grow in knowledge of people in New York or Washington. One doesn't even know one's self." "All journeys must be good for honeymooners, don't you think?" "Yes, in a way; but some places are created for lovers and newlyweds, who are, after all, only explorers, Charlotte, forever discovering new lands and annexing new territories." "Yes; and sometimes falling into the hands of savages and cannibals, I suppose." "Yes; that must be terrible--the awakening to find that one has been mistaken in a man!" sighed Dolly. "I dare say we ought to worry lest men be mistaken in us; it might happen, you know." "Your mind is so logical, Charlotte! However, this voyage wouldn't have to be idealized to meet the needs of honeymooners. In a Vermont village where I sometimes stay I remember a girl who had to be married on Sunday because she could not give up her position as telegraph-operator till Saturday night. That was dull enough in all conscience, but she was married in her high-school graduating dress, and went to her grandmother's house, ten miles away, for her wedding-journey. I think it required considerable inward felicity to exalt that situation!" I sat upright in my steamer chair. "Dorothea," I said sharply, "you have been manufacturing conversation for the last five minutes--just killing time for fear that I should ask you questions. Is there anything on your mind? You have been absentminded and nervous for days." "Your imagination is working overtime, Charlotte," she answered. "We are nearing home, that is all; and life presses closer." I could not gainsay her, for every mile of ocean crossed makes my heart beat faster. I seem to be living just now in a sort of pause between my different lives. There is the heaven of my childhood in the vague background; then the building of my "career," if so modest a thing can be called by so shining a name; then the steady, half-conscious growth of a love that illumines my labors, yet makes them difficult and perplexing; and now there is a sense of suspended activity, of waiting, with a glimmering air-castle rising like an iridescent bubble out of the hazy future. Sometimes there are two welcoming faces at a window and sometimes the indistinct figure of a woman stretching out a forbidding hand, my chief's sister, who may not want a third person in the family! * * * * * S.S. Diana, February 13, 1918