e Well-Beloveds--I want to see
them never any more!... "Instead of sweet smell there shall be stink,
and there shall be burning instead of beauty," said the prophet.'

And they came away. On another afternoon they went to the National
Gallery, to test his taste in paintings, which had formerly been good.
As she had expected, it was just the same with him there. He saw no more
to move him, he declared, in the time-defying presentations of Perugino,
Titian, Sebastiano, and other statuesque creators than in the work of
the pavement artist they had passed on their way.

'It is strange!' said she.

'I don't regret it. That fever has killed a faculty which has, after
all, brought me my greatest sorrows, if a few little pleasures. Let us
be gone.'

He was now so well advanced in convalescence that it was deemed a most
desirable thing to take him down into his native air. Marcia agreed
to accompany him. 'I don't see why I shouldn't,' said she. 'An old
friendless woman like me, and you an old friendless man.'

'Yes. Thank Heaven I am old at last. The curse is removed.'

It may be shortly stated here that after his departure for the isle
Pierston never again saw his studio or its contents. He had been down
there but a brief while when, finding his sense of beauty in art and
nature absolutely extinct, he directed his agent in town to disperse the
whole collection; which was done. His lease of the building was sold,
and in the course of time another sculptor won admiration there from
those who knew not Joseph. The next year his name figured on the retired
list of Academicians.

* * *

As time went on he grew as well as one of his age could expect to be
after such a blasting illness, but remained on the isle, in the only
house he now possessed, a comparatively small one at the top of the
Street of Wells. A growing sense of friendship which it would be foolish
to interrupt led him to take a somewhat similar house for Marcia quite
near, and remove her furniture thither from Sandbourne. Whenever the
afternoon was fine he would call for her and they would take a stroll
together towards the Beal, or the ancient Castle, seldom going the whole
way, his sciatica and her rheumatism effectually preventing them,
except in the driest atmospheres. He had now changed his style of dress
entirely, appearing always in a homely suit of local make, and of the
fashion of thirty years before, the achiev