The Well-Beloved

mand every move and aspect of her who was the rejuvenated Spirit of the P

d. If, after a wet day, a golden streak appeared in the sky over Deadma

t unmistakably. One evening, when she had left her cottage and tripped off in the direction of the under-hill townlet, he set o

again. Then he retraced his steps, and in the dim night he walked backwards and forwards on the bare and lofty convex of the isle; the stars above and around him, the lighthouse on

the invaders who annihilated them, and married their wives and daughters, and produced Avice as the ultimate flower of the combined stocks. Still she did not come. It

e three sublimities-the sky, the rock, and the ocean-the minute personality of this washer-girl filled hi

ed. At one side of the road was a low wall, but she could not have gone behind that without consi

his movement, Avice stood still. When he came up

this mean, my dea

ound and saw you, and huddied behind a stone! You passed and brushed my frock without seeing me. And when, on my way backalong, I saw you wait

u do that fo

shouldn'

nother, dear Avice,' he said, as he

d. 'Come!' h

t you wanted to be my y

yours! Supposing I did

or long, even if it ha

hy

on't laugh at me or l

ev

then what I admire fades out of him and springs up somewhere else; and so I follow on, and never fix to one. I have loved FIFTEEN a'ready! Yes, fifteen, I am almost ashamed to say,' she repeated, laughing. 'I can't help it, sir,

al, just as he had been himself doing for the last twenty years. She was doing it quite involuntarily, by sheer necessity of her org

one of

ered cri

a week; when I

y a

ut t

your fancy forsake my

emed handsome and g

es

u too old s

candid yo

me, sir!' she

intrude upon you longer. So cut along hom

e nature of a knife which could cut two ways. To be the seeker was one thing: to be one of the corpses from whic

ed with her as with him-meant probably that there had been some remote ancestor common to both families,

rolled onward to the narrow pass conducting to Red-King Castle and the sea. He was in momentary heaviness at the thought that they might be Avice with a worthless l

to observe her. While she was pulling down the blinds at sunset a whistle of peculiar quality came from some point on the

o sift this mystery. If he could only win her-and how could a country girl refuse such an opportunity?-he could pack her off to school for two or three years, marry her, enlarge her mind by a little travel, and take his chance of the rest. As to her want of ardour for him-so sa