When William Marchmill had finished his inquiries for lodgings at awell-known watering-place in Upper Wessex, he returned to the hotelto find his wife. She, with the children, had rambled along theshore, and Marchmill followed in the direction indicated by themilitary-looking hall-porter'By Jove, how far you've gone! I am quite out of breath,' Marchmillsaid, rather impatiently, when he came up with his wife, who wasreading as she walked, the three children being considerably furtherahead with the nurse.

　　Mrs. Marchmill started out of the reverie into which the book hadthrown her. 'Yes,' she said, 'you've been such a long time. I wastired of staying in that dreary hotel. But I am sorry if you havewanted me, Will?'

　　'Well, I have had trouble to suit myself. When you see the airy andcomfortable rooms heard of, you find they are stuffy anduncomfortable. Will you come and see if what I've fixed on will do?

　　There is not much room, I am afraid; hut I can light on nothingbetter. The town is rather full.'

　　The pair left the children and nurse to continue their ramble, andwent back together.

　　In age well-balanced, in personal appearance fairly matched, and indomestic requirements conformable, in temper this couple differed,though even here they did not often clash, he being equable, if notlymphatic, and she decidedly nervous and sanguine. It was to theirtastes and fancies, those smallest, greatest particulars, that nocommon denominator could be applied. Marchmill considered hiswife's likes and inclinations somewhat silly; she considered hissordid and material. The husband's business was that of a gunmakerin a thriving city northwards, and his soul was in that businessalways; the lady was best characterized by that superannuated phraseof elegance 'a votary of the muse.' An impressionable, palpitatingcreature was Ella, shrinking humanely from detailed knowledge of herhusband's trade whenever she reflected that everything hemanufactured had for its purpose the destruction of life. She couldonly recover her equanimity by assuring herself that some, at least,of his weapons were sooner or later used for the extermination ofhorrid vermin and animals almost as cruel to their inferiors inspecies as human beings were to theirs.

　　She had never antecedently regarded this occupation of his as anyobjection to having him for a husband. Indeed, the necessity ofgetting life-leased at all cost, a cardinal virtue which all goodmothers teach, kept her from thinking of it at all till she hadclosed with William, had passed the honeymoon, and reached thereflecting stage. Then, like a person who has stumbled upon someobject in the dark, she wondered what she had got; mentally walkedround it, estimated it; whether it were rare or common; containedgold, silver, or lead; were a clog or a pedestal, everything to heror nothing.

　　She came to some vague conclusions, and since then had kept herheart alive by pitying her proprietor's obtuseness and want ofrefinement, pitying herself, and letting off her delicate andethereal emotions in imaginative occupations, day-dreams, and night-sighs, which perhaps would not much have disturbed William if he hadknown of them.

　　Her figure was small, elegant, and slight in build, tripping, orrather bounding, in movement. She was dark-eyed, and had thatmarvellously bright and liquid sparkle in each pupil whichcharacterizes persons of Ella's cast of soul, and is too often acause of heartache to the possessor's male friends, ultimatelysometimes to herself. Her husband was a tall, long-featured man,with a brown beard; he had a pondering regard; and was, it must beadded, usually kind and tolerant to her. He spoke in squarelyshaped sentences, and was supremely satisfied with a condition ofsublunary things which made weapons a necessity.

　　Husband and wife walked till they had reached the house they were insearch of, which stood in a terrace facing the sea, and was frontedby a small garden of wind-proof and salt-proof evergreens, stonesteps leading up to the porch. It had its number in the row, but,being rather larger than the rest, was in addition sedulouslydistinguished as Coburg House by its landlady, though everybody elsecalled it 'Thirteen, New Parade.' The spot was bright and livelynow; but in winter it became necessary to place sandbags against thedoor, and to stuff up the keyhole against the wind and rain, whichhad worn the paint so thin that the priming and knotting showedthrough.

　　The householder, who bad been watching for the gentleman's return,met them in the passage, and showed the rooms. She informed themthat she was a professional man's widow, left in needy circumstancesby the rather sudden death of her husband, and she spoke anxiouslyof the conveniences of the establishment.

　　Mrs. Marchmill said that she liked the situation and the house; but,it being small, there would not be accommodation enough, unless shecould have all the rooms.

　　The landlady mused with an air of disappointment. She wanted thevisitors to be her tenants very badly, she said, with obvioushonesty. But unfortunately two of the rooms were occupiedpermanently by a bachelor gentleman. He did not pay season prices,it was true; but as he kept on his apartments all the year round,and was an extremely nice and interesting young man, who gave notrouble, she did not like to turn him out for a month's 'let,' evenat a high figure. 'Perhaps, however,' she added, 'he might offer togo for a time.'

　　They would not hear of this, and went back to the hotel, intendingto proceed to the agent's to inquire further. Hardly had they satdown to tea when the landlady called. Her gentleman, she said, hadbeen so obliging as to offer to give up his rooms for three or fourweeks rather than drive the new-comers away.

　　'It is very kind, but we won't inconvenience him in that way,' saidthe Marchmills.

　　'O, it won't inconvenience him, I assure you!' said the landladyeloquently. 'You see, he's a different sort of young man from most--dreamy, solitary, rather melancholy--and he cares more to be herewhen the south-westerly gales are beating against the door, and thesea washes over the Parade, and there's not a soul in the place,than he does now in the season. He'd just as soon be where, infact, he's going temporarily, to a little cottage on the Islandopposite, for a change.' She hoped therefore that they would come.

　　The Marchmill family accordingly took possession of the house nextday, and it seemed to suit them very well. After luncheon Mr.

　　Marchmill strolled out towards the pier, and Mrs. Marchmill, havingdespatched the children to their outdoor amusements on the sands,settled herself in more completely, examining this and that article,and testing the reflecting powers of the mirror in the wardrobedoor.

　　In the small back sitting-room, which had been the young bachelor's,she found furniture of a more personal nature than in the rest.

　　Shabby books, of correct rather than rare editions, were piled up ina queerly reserved manner in corners, as if the previous occupanthad not conceived the possibility that any incoming person of theseason's bringing could care to look inside them. The landladyhovered on the threshold to rectify anything that Mrs. Marchmillmight not find to her satisfaction.

　　'I'll make this my own little room,' said the latter, 'because thebooks are here. By the way, the person who has left seems to have agood many. He won't mind my reading some of them, Mrs. Hooper, Ihope?'

　　'O dear no, ma'am. Yes, he has a good many. You see, he is in theliterary line himself somewhat. He is a poet--yes, really a poet--and he has a little income of his own, which is enough to writeverses on, but not enough for cutting a figure, even if he caredto.'

　　'A poet! O, I did not know that.'

　　Mrs. Marchmill opened one of the books, and saw the owner's namewritten on the title-page. 'Dear me!' she continued; 'I know hisname very well--Robert Trewe--of course I do; and his writings! Andit is HIS rooms we have taken, and HIM we have turned out of hishome?'

　　Ella Marchmill, sitting down alone a few minutes later, thought withinterested surprise of Robert Trewe. Her own latter history willbest explain that interest. Herself the only daughter of astruggling man of letters, she had during the last year or two takento writing poems, in an endeavour to find a congenial channel inwhich to let flow her painfully embayed emotions, whose formerlimpidity and sparkle seemed departing in the stagnation caused bythe routine of a practical household and the gloom of bearingchildren to a commonplace father. These poems, subscribed with amasculine pseudonym, had appeared in various obscure magazines, andin two cases in rather prominent ones. In the second of the latterthe page which bore her effusion at the bottom, in smallish print,bore at the top, in large print, a few verses on the same subject bythis very man, Robert Trewe. Both of them had, in fact, been struckby a tragic incident reported in the daily papers, and had used itsimultaneously as an inspiration, the editor remarking in a noteupon the coincidence, and that the excellence of both poems promptedhim to give them together.

　　After that event Ella, otherwise 'John Ivy,' had watched with muchattention the appearance anywhere in print of verse bearing thesignature of Robert Trewe, who, with a man's unsusceptibility on thequestion of sex, had never once thought of passing himself off as awoman. To be sure, Mrs. Marchmill had satisfied herself with a sortof reason for doing the contrary in her case; that nobody mightbelieve in her inspiration if they found that the sentiments camefrom a pushing tradesman's wife, from the mother of three childrenby a matter-of-fact small-arms manufacturer.

　　Trewe's verse contrasted with that of the rank and file of recentminor poets in being impassioned rather than ingenious, luxuriantrather than finished. Neither symboliste nor decadent, he was apessimist in so far as that character applies to a man who looks atthe worst contingencies as well as the best in the human condition.

　　Being little attracted by excellences of form and rhythm apart fromcontent, he sometimes, when feeling outran his artistic speed,perpetrated sonnets in the loosely rhymed Elizabethan fashion, whichevery right-minded reviewer said he ought not to have done.

　　With sad and hopeless envy, Ella Marchmill had often and oftenscanned the rival poet's work, so much stronger as it always wasthan her own feeble lines. She had imitated him, and her inabilityto touch his level would send her into fits of despondency. Monthspassed away thus, till she observed from the publishers' list thatTrewe had collected his fugitive pieces into a volume, which wasduly issued, and was much or little praised according to chance, andhad a sale quite sufficient to pay for the printing.

　　This step onward had suggested to John Ivy the idea of collectingher pieces also, or at any rate of making up a book of her rhymes byadding many in manuscript to the few that had seen the light, forshe had been able to get no great number into print. A ruinouscharge was made for costs of publication; a few reviews noticed herpoor little volume; but nobody talked of it, nobody bought it, andit fell dead in a fortnight--if it had ever been alive.

　　The author's thoughts were diverted to another groove just then bythe discovery that she was going to have a third child, and thecollapse of her poetical venture had perhaps less effect upon hermind than it might have done if she had been domesticallyunoccupied. Her husband had paid the publisher's bill with thedoctor's, and there it all had ended for the time. But, though lessthan a poet of her century, Ella was more than a mere multiplier ofher kind, and latterly she had begun to feel the old afflatus oncemore. And now by an odd conjunction she found herself in the roomsof Robert Trewe.

　　She thoughtfully rose from her chair and searched the apartment withthe interest of a fellow-tradesman. Yes, the volume of his ownverse was among the rest. Though quite familiar with its contents,she read it here as if it spoke aloud to her, then called up Mrs.

　　Hooper, the landlady, for some trivial service, and inquired againabout the young man.

　　'Well, I'm sure you'd be interested in him, ma'am, if you could seehim, only he's so shy that I don't suppose you will.' Mrs. Hooperseemed nothing loth to minister to her tenant's curiosity about herpredecessor. 'Lived here long? Yes, nearly two years. He keeps onhis rooms even when he's not here: the soft air of this place suitshis chest, and he likes to be able to come back at any time. He ismostly writing or reading, and doesn't see many people, though, forthe matter of that, he is such a good, kind young fellow that folkswould only be too glad to be friendly with him if they knew him.

　　You don't meet kind-hearted people every day.'

　　'Ah, he's kind-hearted . . . and good.'

　　'Yes; he'll oblige me in anything if I ask him. "Mr. Trewe," I sayto him sometimes, "you are rather out of spirits." "Well, I am,Mrs. Hooper," he'll say, "though I don't know how you should find itout." "Why not take a little change?" I ask. Then in a day or twohe'll say that he will take a trip to Paris, or Norway, orsomewhere; and I assure you he comes back all the better for it.'

　　'Ah, indeed! His is a sensitive nature, no doubt.'

　　'Yes. Still he's odd in some things. Once when he had finished apoem of his composition late at night he walked up and down the roomrehearsing it; and the floors being so thin--jerry-built houses, youknow, though I say it myself--he kept me awake up above him till Iwished him further . . . But we get on very well.'

　　This was but the beginning of a series of conversations about therising poet as the days went on. On one of these occasions Mrs.

　　Hooper drew Ella's attention to what she had not noticed before:

　　minute scribblings in pencil on the wall-paper behind the curtainsat the head of the bed.

　　'O! let me look,' said Mrs. Marchmill, unable to conceal a rush oftender curiosity as she bent her pretty face close to the wall.

　　'These,' said Mrs. Hooper, with the manner of a woman who knewthings, 'are the very beginnings and first thoughts of his verses.

　　He has tried to rub most of them out, but you can read them still.

　　My belief is that he wakes up in the night, you know, with somerhyme in his head, and jots it down there on the wall lest he shouldforget it by the morning. Some of these very lines you see here Ihave seen afterwards in print in the magazines. Some are newer;indeed, I have not seen that one before. It must have been doneonly a few days ago.'

　　'O yes! . . . '

　　Ella Marchmill flushed without knowing why, and suddenly wished hercompanion would go away, now that the information was imparted. Anindescribable consciousness of personal interest rather thanliterary made her anxious to read the inscription alone; and sheaccordingly waited till she could do so, with a sense that a greatstore of emotion would be enjoyed in the act.

　　Perhaps because the sea was choppy outside the Island, Ella'shusband found it much pleasanter to go sailing and steaming aboutwithout his wife, who was a bad sailor, than with her. He did notdisdain to go thus alone on board the steamboats of the cheap-trippers, where there was dancing by moonlight, and where thecouples would come suddenly down with a lurch into each other'sarms; for, as he blandly told her, the company was too mixed for himto take her amid such scenes. Thus, while this thrivingmanufacturer got a great deal of change and sea-air out of hissojourn here, the life, external at least, of Ella was monotonousenough, and mainly consisted in passing a certain number of hourseach day in bathing and walking up and down a stretch of shore. Butthe poetic impulse having again waxed strong, she was possessed byan inner flame which left her hardly conscious of what wasproceeding around her.

　　She had read till she knew by heart Trewe's last little volume ofverses, and spent a great deal of time in vainly attempting to rivalsome of them, till, in her failure, she burst into tears. Thepersonal element in the magnetic attraction exercised by thiscircumambient, unapproachable master of hers was so much strongerthan the intellectual and abstract that she could not understand it.

　　To be sure, she was surrounded noon and night by his customaryenvironment, which literally whispered of him to her at everymoment; but he was a man she had never seen, and that all that movedher was the instinct to specialize a waiting emotion on the firstfit thing that came to hand did not, of course, suggest itself toElla.

　　In the natural way of passion under the too practical conditionswhich civilization has devised for its fruition, her husband's lovefor her had not survived, except in the form of fitful friendship,any more than, or even so much as, her own for him; and, being awoman of very living ardours, that required sustenance of some sort,they were beginning to feed on this chancing material, which was,indeed, of a quality far better than chance usually offers.

　　One day the children had been playing hide-and-seek in a closet,whence, in their excitement, they pulled out some clothing. Mrs.

　　Hooper explained that it belonged to Mr. Trewe, and hung it up inthe closet again. Possessed of her fantasy, Ella went later in theafternoon, when nobody was in that part of the house, opened thecloset, unhitched one of the articles, a mackintosh, and put it on,with the waterproof cap belonging to it.

　　'The mantle of Elijah!' she said. 'Would it might inspire me torival him, glorious genius that he is!'

　　Her eyes always grew wet when she thought like that, and she turnedto look at herself in the glass. HIS heart had beat inside thatcoat, and HIS brain had worked under that hat at levels of thoughtshe would never reach. The consciousness of her weakness beside himmade her feel quite sick. Before she had got the things off her thedoor opened, and her husband entered the room.

　　'What the devil--'

　　She blushed, and removed them'I found them in the closet here,' she said, 'and put them on in afreak. What have I else to do? You are always away!'

　　'Always away? Well . . . '

　　That evening she had a further talk with the landlady, who mightherself have nourished a half-tender regard for the poet, so readywas she to discourse ardently about him.

　　'You are interested in Mr. Trewe, I know, ma'am,' she said; 'and hehas just sent to say that he is going to call to-morrow afternoon tolook up some books of his that he wants, if I'll be in, and he mayselect them from your room?'

　　'O yes!'

　　'You could very well meet Mr Trewe then, if you'd like to be in theway!'

　　She promised with secret delight, and went to bed musing of him.

　　Next morning her husband observed: 'I've been thinking of what yousaid, Ell: that I have gone about a good deal and left you withoutmuch to amuse you. Perhaps it's true. To-day, as there's not muchsea, I'll take you with me on board the yacht.'

　　For the first time in her experience of such an offer Ella was notglad. But she accepted it for the moment. The time for setting outdrew near, and she went to get ready. She stood reflecting. Thelonging to see the poet she was now distinctly in love withoverpowered all other considerations.

　　'I don't want to go,' she said to herself. 'I can't bear to beaway! And I won't go.'

　　She told her husband that she had changed her mind about wishing tosail. He was indifferent, and went his way.

　　For the rest of the day the house was quiet, the children havinggone out upon the sands. The blinds waved in the sunshine to thesoft, steady stroke of the sea beyond the wall; and the notes of theGreen Silesian band, a troop of foreign gentlemen hired for theseason, had drawn almost all the residents and promenaders away fromthe vicinity of Coburg House. A knock was audible at the door.

　　Mrs. Marchmill did not hear any servant go to answer it, and shebecame impatient. The books were in the room where she sat; butnobody came up. She rang the bell.

　　'There is some person waiting at the door,' she said.

　　'O no, ma'am! He's gone long ago. I answered it.'

　　Mrs. Hooper came in herself.

　　'So disappointing!' she said. 'Mr. Trewe not coming after all!'

　　'But I heard him knock, I fancy!'

　　'No; that was somebody inquiring for lodgings who came to the wronghouse. I forgot to tell you that Mr. Trewe sent a note just beforelunch to say I needn't get any tea for him, as he should not requirethe books, and wouldn't come to select them.'

　　Ella was miserable, and for a long time could not even re-read hismournful ballad on 'Severed Lives,' so aching was her erratic littleheart, and so tearful her eyes. When the children came in with wetstockings, and ran up to her to tell her of their adventures, shecould not feel that she cared about them half as much as usual.

　　* * *'Mrs. Hooper, have you a photograph of--the gentleman who livedhere?' She was getting to be curiously shy in mentioning his name.

　　'Why, yes. It's in the ornamental frame on the mantelpiece in yourown bedroom, ma'am.'

　　'No; the Royal Duke and Duchess are in that.'

　　'Yes, so they are; but he's behind them. He belongs rightly to thatframe, which I bought on purpose; but as he went away he said:

　　"Cover me up from those strangers that are coming, for God's sake.

　　I don't want them staring at me, and I am sure they won't want mestaring at them." So I slipped in the Duke and Duchess temporarilyin front of him, as they had no frame, and Royalties are moresuitable for letting furnished than a private young man. If youtake 'em out you'll see him under. Lord, ma'am, he wouldn't mind ifhe knew it! He didn't think the next tenant would be such anattractive lady as you, or he wouldn't have thought of hidinghimself; perhaps.'

　　'Is he handsome?' she asked timidly.

　　'_I_ call him so. Some, perhaps, wouldn't.'

　　'Should I?' she asked, with eagerness.

　　'I think you would, though some would say he's more striking thanhandsome; a large-eyed thoughtful fellow, you know, with a veryelectric flash in his eye when he looks round quickly, such as you'dexpect a poet to be who doesn't get his living by it.'

　　'How old is he?'

　　'Several years older than yourself, ma'am; about thirty-one or two,I think.'

　　Ella was, as a matter of fact, a few months over thirty herself; butshe did not look nearly so much. Though so immature in nature, shewas entering on that tract of life in which emotional women begin tosuspect that last love may be stronger than first love; and shewould soon, alas, enter on the still more melancholy tract when atleast the vainer ones of her sex shrink from receiving a malevisitor otherwise than with their backs to the window or the blindshalf down. She reflected on Mrs. Hooper's remark, and said no moreabout age.

　　Just then a telegram was brought up. It came from her husband, whohad gone down the Channel as far as Budmouth with his friends in theyacht, and would not be able to get back till next day.

　　After her light dinner Ella idled about the shore with the childrentill dusk, thinking of the yet uncovered photograph in her room,with a serene sense of something ecstatic to come. For, with thesubtle luxuriousness of fancy in which this young woman was anadept, on learning that her husband was to be absent that night shehad refrained from incontinently rushing upstairs and opening thepicture-frame, preferring to reserve the inspection till she couldbe alone, and a more romantic tinge be imparted to the occasion bysilence, candles, solemn sea and stars outside, than was afforded bythe garish afternoon sunlight.

　　The children had been sent to bed, and Ella soon followed, though itwas not yet ten o'clock. To gratify her passionate curiosity shenow made her preparations, first getting rid of superfluous garmentsand putting on her dressing-gown, then arranging a chair in front ofthe table and reading several pages of Trewe's tenderest utterances.

　　Then she fetched the portrait-frame to the light, opened the back,took out the likeness, and set it up before her.

　　It was a striking countenance to look upon. The poet wore aluxuriant black moustache and imperial, and a slouched hat whichshaded the forehead. The large dark eyes, described by thelandlady, showed an unlimited capacity for misery; they looked outfrom beneath well-shaped brows as if they were reading the universein the microcosm of the confronter's face, and were not altogetheroverjoyed at what the spectacle portended.

　　Ella murmured in her lowest, richest, tenderest tone: 'And it's YOUwho've so cruelly eclipsed me these many times!'

　　As she gazed long at the portrait she fell into thought, till hereyes filled with tears, and she touched the cardboard with her lips.

　　Then she laughed with a nervous lightness, and wiped her eyes.

　　She thought how wicked she was, a woman having a husband and threechildren, to let her mind stray to a stranger in this unconscionablemanner. No, he was not a stranger! She knew his thoughts andfeelings as well as she knew her own; they were, in fact, the self-same thoughts and feelings as hers, which her husband distinctlylacked; perhaps luckily for himself; considering that he had toprovide for family expenses.

　　'He's nearer my real self, he's more intimate with the real me thanWill is, after all, even though I've never seen him,' she said.

　　She laid his book and picture on the table at the bedside, and whenshe was reclining on the pillow she re-read those of Robert Trewe'sverses which she had marked from time to time as most touching andtrue. Putting these aside, she set up the photograph on its edgeupon the coverlet, and contemplated it as she lay. Then she scannedagain by the light of the candle the half-obliterated pencillings onthe wall-paper beside her head. There they were--phrases, couplets,bouts-rimes, beginnings and middles of lines, ideas in the rough,like Shelley's scraps, and the least of them so intense, so sweet,so palpitating, that it seemed as if his very breath, warm andloving, fanned her cheeks from those walls, walls that hadsurrounded his head times and times as they surrounded her own now.

　　He must often have put up his hand so--with the pencil in it. Yes,the writing was sideways, as it would be if executed by one whoextended his arm thus.

　　These inscribed shapes of the poet's world,'Forms more real than living man,Nurslings of immortality,'

　　were, no doubt, the thoughts and spirit-strivings which had come tohim in the dead of night, when he could let himself go and have nofear of the frost of criticism. No doubt they had often beenwritten up hastily by the light of the moon, the rays of the lamp,in the blue-grey dawn, in full daylight perhaps never. And now herhair was dragging where his arm had lain when he secured thefugitive fancies; she was sleeping on a poet's lips, immersed in thevery essence of him, permeated by his spirit as by an ether.

　　While she was dreaming the minutes away thus, a footstep came uponthe stairs, and in a moment she heard her husband's heavy step onthe landing immediately without.

　　'Ell, where are you?'

　　What possessed her she could not have described, but, with aninstinctive objection to let her husband know what she had beendoing, she slipped the photograph under the pillow just as he flungopen the door, with the air of a man who had dined not badly.

　　'O, I beg pardon,' said William Marchmill. 'Have you a headache? Iam afraid I have disturbed you.'

　　'No, I've not got a headache,' said she. 'How is it you've come?'

　　'Well, we found we could get back in very good time after all, and Ididn't want to make another day of it, because of going somewhereelse to-morrow.'

　　'Shall I come down again?'

　　'O no. I'm as tired as a dog. I've had a good feed, and I shallturn in straight off. I want to get out at six o'clock to-morrow ifI can . . . I shan't disturb you by my getting up; it will be longbefore you are awake.' And he came forward into the room.

　　While her eyes followed his movements, Ella softly pushed thephotograph further out of sight.

　　'Sure you're not ill?' he asked, bending over her.

　　'No, only wicked!'

　　'Never mind that.' And he stooped and kissed her.

　　Next morning Marchmill was called at six o'clock; and in waking andyawning she heard him muttering to himself: 'What the deuce is thisthat's been crackling under me so?' Imagining her asleep hesearched round him and withdrew something. Through her half-openedeyes she perceived it to be Mr. Trewe.

　　'Well, I'm damned!' her husband exclaimed.

　　'What, dear?' said she.

　　'O, you are awake? Ha! ha!'

　　'What DO you mean?'

　　'Some bloke's photograph--a friend of our landlady's, I suppose. Iwonder how it came here; whisked off the table by accident perhapswhen they were making the bed.'

　　'I was looking at it yesterday, and it must have dropped in then.'

　　'O, he's a friend of yours? Bless his picturesque heart!'

　　Ella's loyalty to the object of her admiration could not endure tohear him ridiculed. 'He's a clever man!' she said, with a tremor inher gentle voice which she herself felt to be absurdly uncalled for.

　　'He is a rising poet--the gentleman who occupied two of these roomsbefore we came, though I've never seen him.'

　　'How do you know, if you've never seen him?'

　　'Mrs. Hooper told me when she showed me the photograph.'

　　'O; well, I must up and be off. I shall be home rather early.

　　Sorry I can't take you to-day, dear. Mind the children don't gogetting drowned.'

　　That day Mrs. Marchmill inquired if Mr. Trewe were likely to call atany other time.

　　'Yes,' said Mrs. Hooper. 'He's coming this day week to stay with afriend near here till you leave. He'll be sure to call.'

　　Marchmill did return quite early in the afternoon; and, opening someletters which had arrived in his absence, declared suddenly that heand his family would have to leave a week earlier than they hadexpected to do--in short, in three days.

　　'Surely we can stay a week longer?' she pleaded. 'I like it here.'

　　'I don't. It is getting rather slow.'

　　'Then you might leave me and the children!'

　　'How perverse you are, Ell! What's the use? And have to come tofetch you! No: we'll all return together; and we'll make out ourtime in North Wales or Brighton a little later on. Besides, you'vethree days longer yet.'

　　It seemed to be her doom not to meet the man for whose rival talentshe had a despairing admiration, and to whose person she was nowabsolutely attached. Yet she determined to make a last effort; andhaving gathered from her landlady that Trewe was living in a lonelyspot not far from the fashionable town on the Island opposite, shecrossed over in the packet from the neighbouring pier the followingafternoon.

　　What a useless journey it was! Ella knew but vaguely where thehouse stood, and when she fancied she had found it, and ventured toinquire of a pedestrian if he lived there, the answer returned bythe man was that he did not know. And if he did live there, howcould she call upon him? Some women might have the assurance to doit, but she had not. How crazy he would think her. She might haveasked him to call upon her, perhaps; but she had not the courage forthat, either. She lingered mournfully about the picturesque seasideeminence till it was time to return to the town and enter thesteamer for recrossing, reaching home for dinner without having beengreatly missed.

　　At the last moment, unexpectedly enough, her husband said that heshould have no objection to letting her and the children stay ontill the end of the week, since she wished to do so, if she feltherself able to get home without him. She concealed the pleasurethis extension of time gave her; and Marchmill went off the nextmorning alone.

　　But the week passed, and Trewe did not call.

　　On Saturday morning the remaining members of the Marchmill familydeparted from the place which had been productive of so much fervourin her. The dreary, dreary train; the sun shining in moted beamsupon the hot cushions; the dusty permanent way; the mean rows ofwire--these things were her accompaniment: while out of the windowthe deep blue sea-levels disappeared from her gaze, and with themher poet's home. Heavy-hearted, she tried to read, and weptinstead.

　　Mr. Marchmill was in a thriving way of business, and he and hisfamily lived in a large new house, which stood in rather extensivegrounds a few miles outside the city wherein he carried on histrade. Ella's life was lonely here, as the suburban life is apt tobe, particularly at certain seasons; and she had ample time toindulge her taste for lyric and elegiac composition. She had hardlygot back when she encountered a piece by Robert Trewe in the newnumber of her favourite magazine, which must have been writtenalmost immediately before her visit to Solentsea, for it containedthe very couplet she had seen pencilled on the wallpaper by the bed,and Mrs. Hooper had declared to be recent. Ella could resist nolonger, but seizing a pen impulsively, wrote to him as a brother-poet, using the name of John Ivy, congratulating him in her letteron his triumphant executions in metre and rhythm of thoughts thatmoved his soul, as compared with her own brow-beaten efforts in thesame pathetic trade.

　　To this address there came a response in a few days, little as shehad dared to hope for it--a civil and brief note, in which the youngpoet stated that, though he was not well acquainted with Mr. Ivy'sverse, he recalled the name as being one he had seen attached tosome very promising pieces; that he was glad to gain Mr. Ivy'sacquaintance by letter, and should certainly look with much interestfor his productions in the future.

　　There must have been something juvenile or timid in her own epistle,as one ostensibly coming from a man, she declared to herself; forTrewe quite adopted the tone of an elder and superior in this reply.

　　But what did it matter? he had replied; he had written to her withhis own hand from that very room she knew so well, for he was nowback again in his quarters.

　　The correspondence thus begun was continued for two months or more,Ella Marchmill sending him from time to time some that sheconsidered to be the best of her pieces, which he very kindlyaccepted, though he did not say he sedulously read them, nor did hesend her any of his own in return. Ella would have been more hurtat this than she was if she had not known that Trewe laboured underthe impression that she was one of his own sex.

　　Yet the situation was unsatisfactory. A flattering little voicetold her that, were he only to see her, matters would be otherwise.

　　No doubt she would have helped on this by making a frank confessionof womanhood, to begin with, if something had not happened, to herdelight, to render it unnecessary. A friend of her husband's, theeditor of the most important newspaper in the city and county, whowas dining with them one day, observed during their conversationabout the poet that his (the editor's) brother the landscape-painterwas a friend of Mr. Trewe's, and that the two men were at that verymoment in Wales together.

　　Ella was slightly acquainted with the editor's brother. The nextmorning down she sat and wrote, inviting him to stay at her housefor a short time on his way back, and requesting him to bring withhim, if practicable, his companion Mr. Trewe, whose acquaintance shewas anxious to make. The answer arrived after some few days. Hercorrespondent and his friend Trewe would have much satisfaction inaccepting her invitation on their way southward, which would be onsuch and such a day in the following week.

　　Ella was blithe and buoyant. Her scheme had succeeded; her belovedthough as yet unseen one was coming. "Behold, he standeth behindour wall; he looked forth at the windows, showing himself throughthe lattice," she thought ecstatically. "And, lo, the winter ispast, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth,the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of theturtle is heard in our land."But it was necessary to consider the details of lodging and feedinghim. This she did most solicitously, and awaited the pregnant dayand hour.

　　It was about five in the afternoon when she heard a ring at the doorand the editor's brother's voice in the hall. Poetess as she was,or as she thought herself, she had not been too sublime that day todress with infinite trouble in a fashionable robe of rich material,having a faint resemblance to the chiton of the Greeks, a style justthen in vogue among ladies of an artistic and romantic turn, whichhad been obtained by Ella of her Bond Street dressmaker when she waslast in London. Her visitor entered the drawing-room. She lookedtowards his rear; nobody else came through the door. Where, in thename of the God of Love, was Robert Trewe?

　　'O, I'm sorry,' said the painter, after their introductory words hadbeen spoken. 'Trewe is a curious fellow, you know, Mrs. Marchmill.

　　He said he'd come; then he said he couldn't. He's rather dusty.

　　We've been doing a few miles with knapsacks, you know; and he wantedto get on home.'

　　'He--he's not coming?'

　　'He's not; and he asked me to make his apologies.'

　　'When did you p-p-part from him?' she asked, her nether lip startingoff quivering so much that it was like a tremolo-stop opened in herspeech. She longed to run away from this dreadful bore and cry hereyes out.

　　'Just now, in the turnpike road yonder there.'

　　'What! he has actually gone past my gates?'

　　'Yes. When we got to them--handsome gates they are, too, the finestbit of modern wrought-iron work I have seen--when we came to them westopped, talking there a little while, and then he wished me good-bye and went on. The truth is, he's a little bit depressed justnow, and doesn't want to see anybody. He's a very good fellow, anda warm friend, but a little uncertain and gloomy sometimes; hethinks too much of things. His poetry is rather too erotic andpassionate, you know, for some tastes; and he has just come in for aterrible slating from the -- Review that was published yesterday; hesaw a copy of it at the station by accident. Perhaps you've readit?'

　　'No.'

　　'So much the better. O, it is not worth thinking of; just one ofthose articles written to order, to please the narrow-minded set ofsubscribers upon whom the circulation depends. But he's upset byit. He says it is the misrepresentation that hurts him so; that,though he can stand a fair attack, he can't stand lies that he'spowerless to refute and stop from spreading. That's just Trewe'sweak point. He lives so much by himself that these things affecthim much more than they would if he were in the bustle offashionable or commercial life. So he wouldn't come here, makingthe excuse that it all looked so new and monied--if you'll pardon--'

　　'But--he must have known--there was sympathy here! Has he neversaid anything about getting letters from this address?'

　　'Yes, yes, he has, from John Ivy--perhaps a relative of yours, hethought, visiting here at the time?'

　　'Did he--like Ivy, did he say?'

　　'Well, I don't know that he took any great interest in Ivy.'

　　'Or in his poems?'

　　'Or in his poems--so far as I know, that is.'

　　Robert Trewe took no interest in her house, in her poems, or intheir writer. As soon as she could get away she went into thenursery and tried to let off her emotion by unnecessarily kissingthe children, till she had a sudden sense of disgust at beingreminded how plain-looking they were, like their father.

　　The obtuse and single-minded landscape-painter never once perceivedfrom her conversation that it was only Trewe she wanted, and nothimself. He made the best of his visit, seeming to enjoy thesociety of Ella's husband, who also took a great fancy to him, andshowed him everywhere about the neighbourhood, neither of themnoticing Ella's mood.

　　The painter had been gone only a day or two when, while sittingupstairs alone one morning, she glanced over the London paper justarrived, and read the following paragraph:-'SUICIDE OF A POET'Mr. Robert Trewe, who has been favourably known for some years asone of our rising lyrists, committed suicide at his lodgings atSolentsea on Saturday evening last by shooting himself in the righttemple with a revolver. Readers hardly need to be reminded that Mr.

　　Trewe has recently attracted the attention of a much wider publicthan had hitherto known him, by his new volume of verse, mostly ofan impassioned kind, entitled "Lyrics to a Woman Unknown," which hasbeen already favourably noticed in these pages for the extraordinarygamut of feeling it traverses, and which has been made the subjectof a severe, if not ferocious, criticism in the -- Review. It issupposed, though not certainly known, that the article may havepartially conduced to the sad act, as a copy of the review inquestion was found on his writing-table; and he has been observed tobe in a somewhat depressed state of mind since the critiqueappeared.'

　　Then came the report of the inquest, at which the following letterwas read, it having been addressed to a friend at a distance:-'DEAR -,--Before these lines reach your hands I shall be deliveredfrom the inconveniences of seeing, hearing, and knowing more of thethings around me. I will not trouble you by giving my reasons forthe step I have taken, though I can assure you they were sound andlogical. Perhaps had I been blessed with a mother, or a sister, ora female friend of another sort tenderly devoted to me, I might havethought it worth while to continue my present existence. I havelong dreamt of such an unattainable creature, as you know, and she,this undiscoverable, elusive one, inspired my last volume; theimaginary woman alone, for, in spite of what has been said in somequarters, there is no real woman behind the title. She hascontinued to the last unrevealed, unmet, unwon. I think itdesirable to mention this in order that no blame may attach to anyreal woman as having been the cause of my decease by cruel orcavalier treatment of me. Tell my landlady that I am sorry to havecaused her this unpleasantness; but my occupancy of the rooms willsoon be forgotten. There are ample funds in my name at the bank topay all expenses. R. TREWE.'

　　Ella sat for a while as if stunned, then rushed into the adjoiningchamber and flung herself upon her face on the bed.

　　Her grief and distraction shook her to pieces; and she lay in thisfrenzy of sorrow for more than an hour. Broken words came every nowand then from her quivering lips: 'O, if he had only known of me--known of me--me! . . . O, if I had only once met him--only once; andput my hand upon his hot forehead--kissed him--let him know how Iloved him--that I would have suffered shame and scorn, would havelived and died, for him! Perhaps it would have saved his dear life!

　　. . . But no--it was not allowed! God is a jealous God; and thathappiness was not for him and me!'

　　All possibilities were over; the meeting was stultified. Yet it wasalmost visible to her in her fantasy even now, though it could neverbe substantiated -'The hour which might have been, yet might not be,Which man's and woman's heart conceived and bore,Yet whereof life was barren.'

　　She wrote to the landlady at Solentsea in the third person, in assubdued a style as she could command, enclosing a postal order for asovereign, and informing Mrs. Hooper that Mrs. Marchmill had seen inthe papers the sad account of the poet's death, and having been, asMrs. Hooper was aware, much interested in Mr. Trewe during her stayat Coburg House, she would be obliged if Mrs. Hooper could obtain asmall portion of his hair before his coffin was closed down, andsend it her as a memorial of him, as also the photograph that was inthe frame.

　　By the return-post a letter arrived containing what had beenrequested. Ella wept over the portrait and secured it in herprivate drawer; the lock of hair she tied with white ribbon and putin her bosom, whence she drew it and kissed it every now and then insome unobserved nook.

　　'What's the matter?' said her husband, looking up from his newspaperon one of these occasions. 'Crying over something? A lock of hair?

　　Whose is it?'

　　'He's dead!' she murmured.

　　'Who?'

　　'I don't want to tell you, Will, just now, unless you insist!' shesaid, a sob hanging heavy in her voice.

　　'O, all right.'

　　'Do you mind my refusing? I will tell you some day.'

　　'It doesn't matter in the least, of course.'

　　He walked away whistling a few bars of no tune in particular; andwhen he had got down to his factory in the city the subject cameinto Marchmill's head again.

　　He, too, was aware that a suicide had taken place recently at thehouse they had occupied at Solentsea. Having seen the volume ofpoems in his wife's hand of late, and heard fragments of thelandlady's conversation about Trewe when they were her tenants, heall at once said to himself; 'Why of course it's he! How the devildid she get to know him? What sly animals women are!'

　　Then he placidly dismissed the matter, and went on with his dailyaffairs. By this time Ella at home had come to a determination.

　　Mrs. Hooper, in sending the hair and photograph, had informed her ofthe day of the funeral; and as the morning and noon wore on anoverpowering wish to know where they were laying him took possessionof the sympathetic woman. Caring very little now what her husbandor any one else might think of her eccentricities; she wroteMarchmill a brief note, stating that she was called away for theafternoon and evening, but would return on the following morning.

　　This she left on his desk, and having given the same information tothe servants, went out of the house on foot.

　　When Mr. Marchmill reached home early in the afternoon the servantslooked anxious. The nurse took him privately aside, and hinted thather mistress's sadness during the past few days had been such thatshe feared she had gone out to drown herself. Marchmill reflected.

　　Upon the whole he thought that she had not done that. Withoutsaying whither he was bound he also started off, telling them not tosit up for him. He drove to the railway-station, and took a ticketfor Solentsea.

　　It was dark when he reached the place, though he had come by a fasttrain, and he knew that if his wife had preceded him thither itcould only have been by a slower train, arriving not a great whilebefore his own. The season at Solentsea was now past: the paradewas gloomy, and the flys were few and cheap. He asked the way tothe Cemetery, and soon reached it. The gate was locked, but thekeeper let him in, declaring, however, that there was nobody withinthe precincts. Although it was not late, the autumnal darkness hadnow become intense; and he found some difficulty in keeping to theserpentine path which led to the quarter where, as the man had toldhim, the one or two interments for the day had taken place. Hestepped upon the grass, and, stumbling over some pegs, stooped nowand then to discern if possible a figure against the sky.

　　He could see none; but lighting on a spot where the soil wastrodden, beheld a crouching object beside a newly made grave. Sheheard him, and sprang up.

　　'Ell, how silly this is!' he said indignantly. 'Running away fromhome--I never heard such a thing! Of course I am not jealous ofthis unfortunate man; but it is too ridiculous that you, a marriedwoman with three children and a fourth coming, should go losing yourhead like this over a dead lover! . . . Do you know you were lockedin? You might not have been able to get out all night.'

　　She did not answer.

　　'I hope it didn't go far between you and him, for your own sake.'

　　'Don't insult me, Will.'

　　'Mind, I won't have any more of this sort of thing; do you hear?'

　　'Very well,' she said.

　　He drew her arm within his own, and conducted her out of theCemetery. It was impossible to get back that night; and not wishingto be recognized in their present sorry condition, he took her to amiserable little coffee-house close to the station, whence theydeparted early in the morning, travelling almost without speaking,under the sense that it was one of those dreary situations occurringin married life which words could not mend, and reaching their owndoor at noon.

　　The months passed, and neither of the twain ever ventured to start aconversation upon this episode. Ella seemed to be only toofrequently in a sad and listless mood, which might almost have beencalled pining. The time was approaching when she would have toundergo the stress of childbirth for a fourth time, and thatapparently did not tend to raise her spirits.

　　'I don't think I shall get over it this time!' she said one day.

　　'Pooh! what childish foreboding! Why shouldn't it be as well now asever?'

　　She shook her head. 'I feel almost sure I am going to die; and Ishould be glad, if it were not for Nelly, and Frank, and Tiny.'

　　'And me!'

　　'You'll soon find somebody to fill my place,' she murmured, with asad smile. 'And you'll have a perfect right to; I assure you ofthat.'

　　'Ell, you are not thinking still about that--poetical friend ofyours?'

　　She neither admitted nor denied the charge. 'I am not going to getover my illness this time,' she reiterated. 'Something tells me Ishan't.'

　　This view of things was rather a bad beginning, as it usually is;and, in fact, six weeks later, in the month of May, she was lying inher room, pulseless and bloodless, with hardly strength enough leftto follow up one feeble breath with another, the infant for whoseunnecessary life she was slowly parting with her own being fat andwell. Just before her death she spoke to Marchmill softly:-'Will, I want to confess to you the entire circumstances of that--about you know what--that time we visited Solentsea. I can't tellwhat possessed me--how I could forget you so, my husband! But I hadgot into a morbid state: I thought you had been unkind; that youhad neglected me; that you weren't up to my intellectual level,while he was, and far above it. I wanted a fuller appreciator,perhaps, rather than another lover--'

　　She could get no further then for very exhaustion; and she went offin sudden collapse a few hours later, without having said anythingmore to her husband on the subject of her love for the poet.

　　William Marchmill, in truth, like most husbands of several years'

　　standing, was little disturbed by retrospective jealousies, and hadnot shown the least anxiety to press her for confessions concerninga man dead and gone beyond any power of inconveniencing him more.

　　But when she had been buried a couple of years it chanced one daythat, in turning over some forgotten papers that he wished todestroy before his second wife entered the house, he lighted on alock of hair in an envelope, with the photograph of the deceasedpoet, a date being written on the back in his late wife's hand. Itwas that of the time they spent at Solentsea.

　　Marchmill looked long and musingly at the hair and portrait, forsomething struck him. Fetching the little boy who had been thedeath of his mother, now a noisy toddler, he took him on his knee,held the lock of hair against the child's head, and set up thephotograph on the table behind, so that he could closely compare thefeatures each countenance presented. There were undoubtedly strongtraces of resemblance; the dreamy and peculiar expression of thepoet's face sat, as the transmitted idea, upon the child's, and thehair was of the same hue.

　　'I'm damned if I didn't think so!' murmured Marchmill. 'Then sheDID play me false with that fellow at the lodgings! Let me see:

　　the dates--the second week in August . . . the third week in May . .

　　. Yes . . . yes . . . Get away, you poor little brat! You arenothing to me!'

　　1893.