ess. The stupid burlesque majesty of it was unendurable to
thought. Nevertheless, I had to thank him for shielding Ottilia, and I
had to brood on the fact that I had drawn her into a situation requiring
such a shield. He, meanwhile, according to his habit, was engaged in
reviewing the triumphs to come. 'We have won a princess!' And what
England would say, how England would look, when, on a further journey,
I brought my princess home, entirely occupied his imagination, to my
excessive torture--a state of mind for which it was impossible to ask
his mercy. His sole link with the past appeared to be this notion that
he had planned all the good things in store for us. Consequently I was
condemned to hear of the success of the plot, until--for I had not the
best of consciences--I felt my hand would be spell-bound in the attempt
to write to the princess; and with that sense of incapacity I seemed to
be cut loose from her, drifting back into the desolate days before I
saw her wheeled in her invalid chair along the sands and my life knew
sunrise.

But whatever the mood of our affections, so it is with us island
wanderers: we cannot gaze over at England, knowing the old country to be
close under the sea-line, and not hail it, and partly forget ourselves
in the time that was. The smell of sea-air made me long for the white
cliffs, the sight of the white cliffs revived pleasant thoughts of
Riversley, and thoughts of Riversley thoughts of Janet, which were
singularly and refreshingly free from self-accusations. Some love for my
home, similar to what one may have for Winter, came across me, and some
appreciation of Janet as well, in whose society was sure to be at least
myself, a creature much reduced in altitude, but without the cramped
sensations of a man on a monument. My hearty Janet! I thanked her then
for seeing me of my natural height.

Some hours after parting with my father in London, I lay down to sleep
in my old home, feeling as if I had thrown off a coat of armour. I awoke
with a sailor's song on my lips. Looking out of window at the well-known
features of the heaths and dark firs, and waning oak copses, and the
shadowy line of the downs stretching their long whale backs South to
West, it struck me that I had been barely alive of late. Indeed one who
consents to live as I had done, in a hope and a retrospect, will find
his life slipping between the two, like the ships under the striding
Colossus. I shook myself, braced m