ringing of a million silver bells. What fairy-like creature
of the insect world gave out this lovely music she was at no pains to
discover. It was enough that it was, and she had leaned out of her
window many a night and wondered why Byam Warner had never sung its
music in his verse.

Byam Warner! How--how was she to think of him? Her overthrown ideals
no longer even interested her, belonging as they did to some far off
time when she had not come herself to dream upon these ravishing
shores. And now the surrender of the past three weeks had been far
more rudely disturbed. Would even Nevis dominate again? Must not such
a man, even in his ruin, cast his shadow over any scene of which
he was a part? And of Nevis he was a part! She had been able to
disassociate them only until he stood before her, quick. And now she
should see him, talk to him every day, possibly receive his devotions,
for there was no doubt that he admired her as the antithesis of all to
which he had been accustomed from birth; unquestionably she must take
her part in his redemption. The thought thrilled her, and she paused
a moment looking out over the water. Faded, even repellent, as that
husk was, not only was his genius so far unimpaired, but she believed
that she had caught a glimpse of a great soul dwelling apart in that
polluted tenement. From the latter she shrank with all the aversion
of uncontaminated girlhood, but she felt that she owed it to her
intellect to recognise the separateness of those highest faculties
possessed by the few, from the flesh they were forced to carry in
common with the aborigines. And it seemed almost incredible that his
life had not swamped, mired, smothered all that was lofty and
beautiful in that inner citadel; her feminine curiosity impelled her
to discover if this really were so, or if he had merely retained a
trick of expression.

She was skirting the town, keeping close to the shore, but she paused
again, involuntarily, to look in the direction of that baker's
dwelling, through the window of which, some months since, Byam Warner,
mad with drink, had precipitated himself one night, shrieking for the
handsome wife of the indignant spouse. For this escapade he had lain
in jail until a coloured planter had bailed him out--for the white
Creoles thought it a good opportunity to emphasize their opinion of
him--and although he had been dismissed with a fine, the judge had
delivered himself of a weighty reprimand which wa