t of its facts. He told of the opening of the letter and the
discovery of the death of an old acquaintance.

'The only woman whom I never rightly valued, I may almost say!' he
added; 'and therefore the only one I shall ever regret!'

Whether she considered it a sufficient explanation or not the woman of
experiences accepted it as such. She was the single lady of his circle
whom nothing erratic in his doings could surprise, and he often gave her
stray ends of his confidence thus with perfect safety.

He did not go near Mrs. Pine-Avon again; he could not: and on leaving
the house walked abstractedly along the streets till he found himself at
his own door. In his room he sat down, and placing his hands behind his
head thought his thoughts anew.

At one side of the room stood an escritoire, and from a lower drawer
therein he took out a small box tightly nailed down. He forced the cover
with the poker. The box contained a variety of odds and ends, which
Pierston had thrown into it from time to time in past years for future
sorting--an intention that he had never carried out. From the melancholy
mass of papers, faded photographs, seals, diaries, withered flowers,
and such like, Jocelyn drew a little portrait, one taken on glass in the
primitive days of photography, and framed with tinsel in the commonest
way.

It was Avice Caro, as she had appeared during the summer month or two
which he had spent with her on the island twenty years before this time,
her young lips pursed up, her hands meekly folded. The effect of the
glass was to lend to the picture much of the softness characteristic of
the original. He remembered when it was taken--during one afternoon
they had spent together at a neighbouring watering-place, when he had
suggested her sitting to a touting artist on the sands, there being
nothing else for them to do. A long contemplation of the likeness
completed in his emotions what the letter had begun. He loved the woman
dead and inaccessible as he had never loved her in life. He had thought
of her but at distant intervals during the twenty years since that
parting occurred, and only as somebody he could have wedded. Yet now the
times of youthful friendship with her, in which he had learnt every
note of her innocent nature, flamed up into a yearning and passionate
attachment, embittered by regret beyond words.

That kiss which had offended his dignity, which she had so childishly
given him before her consciousness