Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/149

were so happy there! I can't help feeling as if the old joy were shut up in that cottage, like a tenant who was locked in, and would fly to meet us, and take us in his arms, and bless us both for now and for ever.

"I am your loving and your lonely

I have just written to Dana about the Dowe Cottage. I am afraid it was not exactly a love-letter; somehow, I could not. If I had let him know how much I miss him, I do not think he would quite like it altogether. Why is almighty Nature forever laying a coal of fire upon a woman's lips?

So I wrote quite stiffly and serenely; and when I had finished the letter I cried, for nobody but Job could see.

I just got up and went into his room, and touched all his little things—the brushes on his dressing-case, his slippers lying where he tossed them (for he never likes to have me move them to put them away), his ash-receiver, with a half-burnt cigar just as he left it. Then I went into the closet where his clothes are hanging, and put my cheek to them all, one after the other. His blue velveteen smoking-jacket hung inside the door;