come back to the pantomime which I saw through the window. It was
probably by no means so mysterious in reality as it appeared to me. Yet
what could it have been? or, rather, how can I appropriate it for my
purposes? I have it! The very situation of looking through a window
shall serve as the critical point in my story, only it shall be the hero
of my story, and not an idle spectator like myself, who does the
looking. The young poet, Wilding in disguise, only walks out at night.
He is a shy fellow, who even in public holds his hat, as it were, before
his face. He keeps by himself in his garret, brooding over his poems,
and seeing no one, until he almost loses the power of ordinary
association with other people. When night comes, he walks, sometimes
through the night. But his loneliness has generated a desire for
companionship which he can satisfy only by ghostly intercourse. So,
instead of knowing people, he imagines them, and falls in love with his
imaginations. He observes that one house looking toward the sea always
keeps its curtains drawn. He falls into the way of stealing by every
night to catch a glimpse of a fireside. There he sees a fair girl,--and
I may as well draw her portrait like that of my unknown friend,--with
eyes that are downcast but when raised suddenly grow large and lustrous,
with hands that fold themselves when disengaged, with hair that peeps
shyly over the forehead, and with a figure that seems always to be
listening. She becomes the world to him. He has renounced all common
association with men and women, and he peoples the world which he has
thus brushed out with shapes caught from this one girl. The very silence
which separates them makes him more quick in his imagination to invest
her with the grace which her distant presence never denies."

"Bah! what superfine nonsense I am writing!" exclaimed Buckingham,
pushing his note-book aside, but continuing to sit before his fire in
revery.

VI.

THE REVERSE SIDE OF THE TAPESTRY.

Mr. Henry Wilding suited himself easily to a room in a house which stood
just beyond his cousin's. He wanted little to make him at home; for he
had only pitched his tent in this university town, and had no thought of
settling in it. His wish was to get what he came for and to go again as
little encumbered with baggage as he had come. Something of this sort he
had been saying, not long after his established routine had begun, in a
letter to the lady to whom he had t