, an eye as sure as a bird's the ball of the foot must be
the ball of a certain little foot I have often had in my hand wet
with sea-water and gritty with sand. For such work a mountaineer or a
cragsman, or Winifred, is needed.' Then I recalled her love of marine
creatures, her delight in seaweed, of which she would weave the most
astonishing chaplets and necklaces coloured like the rainbow.
'seawood boas' and seaweed turbans, calling herself the princess of
the sea (as indeed she was), and calling me her prince. 'Yes,' said
I, 'it is certainly she'; and when at last I espied a little dog by
her side, Tom Wynne's little dog Snap (a descendant of the original
Snap of our never-to-be-forgotten seaside adventures)--when I espied
all these things I said, 'Then the hour is come.'

By this time my heart had settled down to a calmer throb, the
paradisal scent had become more supportable, and I grew master of
myself again. I was going towards her, when I stayed my steps, for
she was already making her way, entirely unconscious of my presence,
towards the boulder where I sat.

'I know what I will do.' I said; 'I will fling myself flat on the
sands behind the boulder and watch her. I will observe her without
being myself observed.'

I was in the mood when one tries sportfully to deceive one's self as
to the depth and intensity of the emotion within. Perhaps I would and
perhaps I would not speak to her at all that night; but if I did
speak, I would say and do what (on that day when I set out for
school) I had sworn to say and do.

So there I lay hidden by the boulder and watched her. She made the
circuit of each pool that lay across her path towards the
cliffs,--made it apparently for the childish enjoyment of balancing
herself on the stones and snapping her fingers at the dog, who looked
on with philosophic indifference at such a frivolous waste of force.
Yes, though a tall girl of seventeen, she was the same incomparable
child who had coloured my life and stirred the entire air of my
imagination with the breezes of a new heaven. The voice of the
tumbling sea in the distance, the caresses of the tender breeze, the
wistful gaze of the great moon overhead, were companionship enough
for her--for her whose loveliness would have enchanted a world. She
had no idea that there was at this moment stepping round those black
stones the loveliest woman then upon the earth. If she had had that
idea she would still have been the star of a