of the incident, and asked if he knew the
riders.

'"O yes," he said. "That was Colonel Targe and his daughter Elsie."

'"How old do you think she is?" said I, a sense of disparity in our ages
disturbing my mind.

'"O--nineteen, I think they say. She's going to be married the day after
to-morrow to Captain Popp, of the 501st, and they are ordered off to
India at once."

'The grief which I experienced at this intelligence was such that at
dusk I went away to the edge of the harbour, intending to put an end
to myself there and then. But I had been told that crabs had been found
clinging to the dead faces of persons who had fallen in thereabout,
leisurely eating them, and the idea of such an unpleasant contingency
deterred me. I should state that the marriage of my Beloved concerned me
little; it was her departure that broke my heart. I never saw her again.

'Though I had already learnt that the absence of the corporeal matter
did not involve the absence of the informing spirit, I could scarce
bring myself to believe that in this case it was possible for her to
return to my view without the form she had last inhabited.

'But she did.

'It was not, however, till after a good space of time, during which I
passed through that bearish age in boys, their early teens, when girls
are their especial contempt. I was about seventeen, and was sitting
one evening over a cup of tea in a confectioner's at the very same
watering-place, when opposite me a lady took her seat with a little
girl. We looked at each other awhile, the child made advances, till I
said: "She's a good little thing."

'The lady assented, and made a further remark.

'"She has the soft fine eyes of her mother," said I.

'"Do you think her eyes are good?" asks the lady, as if she had not
heard what she had heard most--the last three words of my opinion.

'"Yes--for copies," said I, regarding her.

'After this we got on very well. She informed me that her husband had
gone out in a yacht, and I said it was a pity he didn't take her with
him for the airing. She gradually disclosed herself in the character of
a deserted young wife, and later on I met her in the street without the
child. She was going to the landing-stage to meet her husband, so she
told me; but she did not know the way.

'I offered to show her, and did so. I will not go into particulars, but
I afterwards saw her several times, and soon discovered that the Beloved
(as to whose whereabouts