actress,--yet the exact association eluded me, and obviously it was
better it should remain a name of mystery. Sylvia Joy! Who could have
hoped for such a pretty name! Indeed, to tell the truth, I had dreaded
to find a "Mary Jones" or an "Ann Williams"--but Sylvia Joy! The name
was a romance in itself. I already felt myself falling in love with
its unseen owner. With such a petticoat and such a name, Sylvia
herself could not be otherwise than delightful too. Already, you see, I
was calling her by her Christian name! And the more I thought of her,
the stronger grew the conviction--which has no doubt already forced
itself upon the romantic reader--that we were born for each other.

But who is Sylvia, who is she? and likewise where is Sylvia, where is
she? Obviously they were questions not to be answered off-hand. Was
not my future--at all events my immediate future--to be spent in
answering them?

Indeed, curiously enough, my recent haste to have them answered had
suddenly died down. A sort of matrimonial security possessed me. I
felt as I imagine a husband may feel on a solitary holiday--if there
are husbands unnatural enough to go holidaying without their
wives--pleasantly conscious of a home tucked somewhere beneath the
distant sunset, yet in no precipitate hurry to return there before the
appointed day.

In fact, a chill tremor went through me as I realised that, to all
intent, I was at length respectably settled down, with quite a
considerable retrospect of happy married life. To come to a decision is
always to bring something to an end. And, with something of a pang,
resolutely stifled, I realised for a moment the true blessedness of the
single state I was so soon to leave behind. At all events, a little
golden fragment of bachelorhood remained. There was yet a fertile
strip of time wherein to sow my last handful of the wild oats of youth.
So festina lente, my destined Sylvia, festina lente!

CHAPTER XVIII

IN WHICH THE NAME OF A GREAT POET IS CRIED OUT IN A SOLITARY PLACE

As I once more shouldered my pack and went my way, the character of the
country side began to change, and, from a semi-pastoral heathiness and
furziness, took on a wildness of aspect, which if indeed melodramatic
was melodrama carried to the point of genius.

It was a scene for which the nineteenth century has no worthy use. It
finds ignoble occupation as a gaping-ground for the vacuous
tourist,--somewhat as Heine might h