ast, he were
doomed to do penance for his past emotional wanderings (in a material
sense) by being chained in fatal fidelity to an object that his
intellect despised? One night he dreamt that he saw dimly masking behind
that young countenance 'the Weaver of Wiles' herself, 'with all her
subtle face laughing aloud.'

However, the Well-Beloved was alive again, had been lost and was found.
He was amazed at the change of front in himself. She had worn the
guise of strange women; she had been a woman of every class, from the
dignified daughter of some ecclesiastic or peer to a Nubian Almeh with
her handkerchief, undulating to the beats of the tom-tom; but all these
embodiments had been endowed with a certain smartness, either of the
flesh or spirit: some with wit, a few with talent, and even genius. But
the new impersonation had apparently nothing beyond sex and prettiness.
She knew not how to sport a fan or handkerchief, hardly how to pull on a
glove.

But her limited life was innocent, and that went far. Poor little Avice!
her mother's image: there it all lay. After all, her parentage was as
good as his own; it was misfortune that had sent her down to this. Odd
as it seemed to him, her limitations were largely what he loved her for.
Her rejuvenating power over him had ineffable charm. He felt as he had
felt when standing beside her predecessor; but, alas! he was twenty
years further on towards the shade.

2. VII. THE NEW BECOMES ESTABLISHED

A few mornings later he was looking through an upper back window over a
screened part of the garden. The door beneath him opened, and a figure
appeared tripping forth. She went round out of sight to where the
gardener was at work, and presently returned with a bunch of green stuff
fluttering in each hand. It was Avice, her dark hair now braided up
snugly under a cap. She sailed on with a rapt and unconscious face, her
thoughts a thousand removes from him.

How she had suddenly come to be an inmate of his own house he could
not understand, till he recalled the fact that he had given the castle
servants a whole holiday to attend a review of the yeomanry in the
watering-place over the bay, on their stating that they could provide a
temporary substitute to stay in the house. They had evidently called
in Avice. To his great pleasure he discovered their opinion of his
requirements to be such a mean one that they had called in no one else.

The Spirit, as she seemed to him, broug