ur English enthusiasm. In addition, son Richie, it
is peculiarly our duty. I, at least, hold the view that it is a family
duty. Think it over, Richie boy. Providence, you see, has sent us the
man. As for me, I feel as if I were in the dawn of one life with all the
mature experience of another. I am calm, I am perfectly unexcited, and I
tell you, old son, I believe--pick among the highest--our destinies are
about the most brilliant of any couple in Great Britain.'

His absence relieved me in spite of my renewed pleasure in his talk; I
may call it a thirsty craving to have him inflating me, puffing the deep
unillumined treasure-pits of my nature with laborious hints, as mines are
filled with air to keep the miners going. While he talked he made these
inmost recesses habitable. But the pain lay in my having now and then to
utter replies. The task of speaking was hateful. I found a sweetness in
brooding unrealizingly over hopes and dreams and possibilities, and I let
him go gladly that I might enjoy a week of silence, just taking
impressions as they came, like the sands in the ebb-tide. The impression
of the morning was always enough for a day's meditation. The green colour
and the crimson athwart it, and higher up the pinky lights, flamingo
feathers, on a warm half-circle of heaven, in hue between amethyst and
milky opal; then the rim of the sun's disc not yet severe; and then the
monstrous shadow of tall Schwartz darting at me along the sand, then the
princess. This picture, seen at sunrise, lasted till I slept. It stirred
no thoughts, conjured no images, it possessed me. In the afternoon the
margravine accompanied the princess to a point facing seaward, within
hearing of the military band. She did me the favour to tell me that she
tolerated me until I should become efficient in German to amuse her, but
the dulness of the Belgian city compared with her lively German
watering-places compelled her to try my powers of fun in French, and in
French I had to do duty, and failed in my office.

'Do you know,' said she, 'that your honourable papa is one in a million?
He has the life of a regiment in his ten fingers. What astonishes me is
that he does not make fury in that England of yours--that Lapland! Je ne
puffs me passer de cet homme! He offends me, he trifles, he outrages, he
dares permit himself to be indignant. Bon! we part, and absence pleads
for him with the eloquence of Satan. I am his victim. Does he, then,
produce no s