oss the interior, carrying her basket, her tender body
encircled by his arm.

'What the devil are you staring at, as if you were in a trance?'

Pierston turned his head: and there stood his old friend Somers--still
looking the long-leased bachelor that he was.

'I might say what the devil do you do here? if I weren't so glad to see
you.'

Somers said that he had come to see what was detaining his friend in
such an out-of-the-way place at that time of year, and incidentally to
get some fresh air into his own lungs. Pierston made him welcome, and
they went towards Sylvania Castle.

'You were staring, as far as I could see, at a pretty little washerwoman
with a basket of clothes?' resumed the painter.

'Yes; it was that to you, but not to me. Behind the mere pretty
island-girl (to the world) is, in my eye, the Idea, in Platonic
phraseology--the essence and epitome of all that is desirable in this
existence.... I am under a doom, Somers. Yes, I am under a doom. To have
been always following a phantom whom I saw in woman after woman while
she was at a distance, but vanishing away on close approach, was bad
enough; but now the terrible thing is that the phantom does NOT vanish,
but stays to tantalize me even when I am near enough to see what it is!
That girl holds me, THOUGH my eyes are open, and THOUGH I see that I am
a fool!'

Somers regarded the visionary look of his friend, which rather
intensified than decreased as his years wore on, but made no further
remark. When they reached the castle Somers gazed round upon the
scenery, and Pierston, signifying the quaint little Elizabethan cottage,
said: 'That's where she lives.'

'What a romantic place!--and this island altogether. A man might love a
scarecrow or turnip-lantern here.'

'But a woman mightn't. Scenery doesn't impress them, though they pretend
it does. This girl is as fickle as--'

'You once were.'

'Exactly--from your point of view. She has told me so--candidly. And it
hits me hard.'

Somers stood still in sudden thought. 'Well--that IS a strange turning
of the tables!' he said. 'But you wouldn't really marry her, Pierston?'

'I would--to-morrow. Why shouldn't I? What are fame and name and society
to me--a descendant of wreckers and smugglers, like her. Besides, I know
what she's made of, my boy, to her innermost fibre; I know the perfect
and pure quarry she was dug from: and that gives a man confidence.'

'Then you'll win.'