held the
world in its hands. But the world teemed with rivers ten times lordlier
than Avon--rivers stretching out in an endless map, with bridges on which
lovers met and whispered, with banks down which they went with linked arms
into the shadows--

"Were I but young for thee, as I hae been,
We should hae been gallopin' doun in yon green,
And linkin' it owre the lily-white lea--
And wow gin I were but young for thee!"

He had been young, and had loved and wronged a woman, and bitterly
repented. He had married her, and marriage had killed neither love nor
remorse. The woman was dead long since: he had married again, but never
forgotten her nor ceased to repent. She, a pretty tradesman's daughter of
Warwick, had collected her savings and taken ship for the West Indies,
trusting to his word, facing a winter's passage in the sole hope that he
would right her. Until the day of embarking she had never seen the sea;
and the sea, after buffeting her to the verge of death, in the end
betrayed her. A gale delayed the ship, and in the height of it her child
was born. Rosewarne, a private soldier, went to his captain, as soon as
she was landed, made a clean breast of it, and married her. But it was
too late. She lived to return with him to England; but he knew well enough
when she died that her sufferings on the passage out, and the abiding
anguish of her shame, had killed her. A common tale! Men and women still
go the way of their instinct, by which the race survives. "All the rivers
run into the sea, and yet the sea is not full. The thing that hath been,
it is that which shall be, and that which is done is that which shall be
done."

A tale as common as sunset! Yet upon all rivers and upon every bridge and
willow-walk along their courses the indifferent sun shines for each pair
of fools with a difference, lighting their passion with a separate flame.
The woman was dead; and he--he that had been young--sat face to face with
death.

He leaned forward, oblivious of the clouded dusk, with his half-shut eyes
watching the grey gleam of the river; but his mind's eye saw the shadowy
mead behind him, and a girlish figure crossing it with feet that seemed to
faint, holding her back from doom, yet to be impelled against their will.

They drew nearer. He heard their step, and faced about with a start.
An actual woman stood there on the river path, most like in the dusk to
that other of thirty-five years a