I cannot stick
to one incarnation if I would.'

'Wait till you are older,' said Somers.

PART SECOND -- A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY

'Since Love will needs that I shall love,
Of very force I must agree:
And since no chance may it remove
In wealth and in adversity
I shall alway myself apply
To serve and suffer patiently.'
--Sir T. Wyatt.

2. I. THE OLD PHANTOM BECOMES DISTINCT

In the course of these long years Pierston's artistic emotions
were abruptly suspended by the news of his father's sudden death at
Sandbourne, whither the stone-merchant had gone for a change of air by
the advice of his physician.

Mr. Pierston, senior, it must be admitted, had been something miserly
in his home life, as Marcia had so rashly reminded his son. But he had
never stinted Jocelyn. He had been rather a hard taskmaster, though as a
paymaster trustworthy; a ready-money man, just and ungenerous. To every
one's surprise, the capital he had accumulated in the stone trade was of
large amount for a business so unostentatiously carried on--much larger
than Jocelyn had ever regarded as possible. While the son had been
modelling and chipping his ephemeral fancies into perennial shapes, the
father had been persistently chiselling for half a century at the
crude original matter of those shapes, the stern, isolated rock in the
Channel; and by the aid of his cranes and pulleys, his trolleys and
his boats, had sent off his spoil to all parts of Great Britain.
When Jocelyn had wound up everything and disposed of the business, as
recommended by his father's will, he found himself enabled to add about
eighty thousand pounds to the twelve thousand which he already possessed
from professional and other sources.

After arranging for the sale of some freehold properties in the island
other than quarries--for he did not intend to reside there--he returned
to town. He often wondered what had become of Marcia. He had promised
never to trouble her; nor for a whole twenty years had he done so;
though he had often sighed for her as a friend of sterling common sense
in practical difficulties.

Her parents were, he believed, dead; and she, he knew, had never gone
back to the isle. Possibly she had formed some new tie abroad, and had
made it next to impossible to discover her by her old name.

A reposeful time ensued. Almost his first entry into society after his
father's death