I never wrote anything but little notes in the old days at Baden, and now I am writing what promises to be a long letter, for we cannot be in under six days, and in all that time there is nothing else I can do--nothing else I would do, if I could.

And yet it is so different.

Perhaps I am incoherent, and you will say, different from what?
It is different from what it used to be, before that thrice-blessed afternoon in the Newport fog.
"The gray mist came down like a curtain, shutting off the past and marking where the present begins.

It seems to me that I never lived before that moment, and yet those months were happy while they lasted, so that it sometimes seemed as though no greater happiness could be possible.

How did it all happen, most blessed lady?
"The lazy, good-natured sea, that loves us well, washes up and glances through my port-hole as I write, as if in answer to my question.