carrying her basket, her tender body encircled by his arm.
'What the devil are you staring at, as if you were in a trance?'
Pierston turned his head: and there stood his old friend Somers--still looking the long-leased bachelor that he was.
'I might say what the devil do you do here? if I weren't so glad to see you.'
Somers said that he had come to see what was detaining his friend in such an out-of-the-way place at that time of year, and incidentally to get some fresh air into his own lungs.
Pierston made him welcome, and they went towards Sylvania Castle.
'You were staring, as far as I could see, at a pretty little washerwoman with a basket of clothes?' resumed the painter.
'Yes; it was that to you, but not to me. Behind the mere pretty island-girl (to the world) is, in my eye, the Idea, in Platonic phraseology--the essence and epitome of all that is desirable in this existence. . . . I am under a doom, Somers. Yes, I am under a doom. To have been always following a phantom whom I saw in woman after woman while she was at a distance, but vanishing away on close approach, was bad enough; but now the terrible thing is that the phantom does NOT vanish, but stays to tantalize me even when I am near enough to see what it is! That girl holds me, THOUGH my eyes are open, and THOUGH I see that I am a fool!'
Somers regarded the visionary look of his friend, which rather intensified than decreased as his years wore on, but made no further remark. When they reached the castle Somers gazed round upon the scenery, and Pierston, signifying the quaint little Elizabethan cottage, said: 'That's where she lives.'
'What a romantic place!--and this island altogether. A man might love a scarecrow or turnip-lantern here.'
'But a woman mightn't. Scenery doesn't impress them, though they pretend it does. This girl is as fickle as--'
'You once were.'
'Exactly--from your point of view. She has told me so--candidly. And it hits me hard.'
Somers stood still in sudden thought. 'Well--that IS a strange turning of the tables!' he said. 'But you wouldn't really marry her, Pierston?'
'I would--to-morrow. Why shouldn't I? What are fame and name and society to me--a descendant of wreckers and smugglers, like her. Besides, I know what she's made of, my boy, to her innermost fibre; I know the perfect and pure quarry she was dug from: and that gives a man confidence.'
'Then you'll win.'
* * *
While they were sitting after dinner that evening their quiet discourse was interrupted by the long low whistle from the cliffs without. Somers took no notice, but Pierston marked it. That whistle always occurred at the same time in the evening when Avice was helping in the house. He excused himself for a moment to his visitor and went out upon the dark lawn. A crunching of feet upon the gravel mixed in with the articulation of the sea--steps light as if they were winged. And he supposed, two minutes later, that the mouth of some hulking fellow was upon hers, which he himself hardly ventured to look at, so touching was its young beauty.
Hearing people about--among others the before-mentioned married couple quarrelling, the woman's tones having a kinship to Avice's own--he returned to the house. Next day Somers roamed abroad to look for scenery for a marine painting, and, going out to seek him, Pierston met Avice.
'So you have a lover, my lady!' he said severely. She admitted that it was the fact. 'You won't stick to him,' he continued.
'I think I may to THIS one,' said she, in a meaning tone that he failed to fathom then. 'He deserted me once, but he won't again.'
'I suppose he's a wonderful sort of fellow?'
'He's good enough for me.'
'So handsome, no doubt.'
'Handsome enough for me.'
'So refined and respectable.'
'Refined and respectable enough for me.'
He could not disturb her equanimity, and let her pass. The next day was Sunday, and Somers having chosen his view at the other end of the island, Pierston determined in the afternoon to see Avice's lover. He found that she had left her cottage stronghold, and went on towards the lighthouses at the Beal. Turning back when he had reached the nearest, he saw on the lonely road between the quarries a young man evidently connected with the stone trade, with Avice the Second upon his arm.
She looked prettily guilty and blushed a little under his glance. The man's was one of the typical island physiognomies--his features energetic and wary in their expression, and half covered with a close, crisp black beard. Pierston fancied that out of his keen dark eyes there glimmered a dry sense of humour at the situation.
If so, Avice must have told him of Pierston's symptoms of tenderness. This girl, whom, for her dear mother's sake more than for her own unquestionable attractiveness, he would have guarded as the apple of his eye, how could she estimate him so flippantly!
The mortification of having brought himself to this position with the antitype, by his early slight of the type, blinded him for the moment to what struck him a short time after.
The man upon whose arm she hung was not a soldier. What, then, became of her entranced gaze at the sentinel? She could hardly have transferred her affections so promptly; or, to give her the benefit of his own theory, her Beloved could scarcely have flitted from frame to frame in so very brief an interval. And which of them had been he who whistled softly in the dusk to her?
Without further attempt to find Alfred Somers Pierston walked homeward, moodily thinking that the desire to
