T 
 
 .A^'
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 ./
 
 The Quest of the Golden Girl
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 Thr Romance or Zion Chapel. Fifth edi- 
 tion. 
 Young Livbs. A Romance. Second edition. 
 
 RubaiyXt op Omar Khavvam. With cover 
 design by Will Bradley. Third edition. 
 
 English Pobms. Revised. 
 
 Robert Loui.s Sievrnso.v : an Elegy. And 
 Other Poems, mainly Personal. 
 
 George Meredith : Some Characteristics. 
 With a Bioliography (much enUrced) by 
 John Lane. Portrait, etc Fifth edition, 
 revised. 
 
 Rudvard Kipling: a Criticism. 
 
 Sleeping Beauty, and Other Prose Fan- 
 cies. 
 
 The Worshipper of the Image. A Tragic 
 Fairy Tale.
 
 THE QUEST OF THE 
 GOLDEN GIRL 
 
 A ROMANCE BY 
 RICHARD LE GALLIENNE 
 
 ^ 
 
 NEW YORK : JOHN LANE COMPANY, MCMX 
 LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
 
 Copyright, i8g6. 
 By John Lane. 
 
 ^11 rights reserved.
 
 :^ 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 PR 
 
 TO 
 
 PRIOR AND LOUISE CHRISTIAN, 
 
 WITH AFFECTION. 
 
 553477
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 Chapter Pack 
 
 I. An Old House and its Bachelor . l 
 
 II. In which I DECIDE TO GO ON PIL- 
 GRIMAGE s 
 
 III. An Indictment of Spring .... 8 
 
 IV. In which I EAT AND DREAM .... 12 
 
 V. Concerning the Perfect Woman, 
 
 AND therefore CONCERNING ALL 
 
 Feminine Readers i8 
 
 VI. In which the Author anticipates 
 Discontent on the Part of his 
 
 Reader 25 
 
 VII. Prandial 27 
 
 VIII. Still Prandial 30 
 
 IX. The Legend of Hebe, or the Heav- 
 enly Housemaid 32 
 
 X. Again on Foot — the Girls that 
 
 NEVER CAN BE MiNE 38
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter Pacb 
 
 XI. An Old Man of the Hills, and 
 
 THE Schoolmaster's Story . . 41 
 
 XII. The Truth about the Gipsies . 51 
 
 XIII. A Strange Wedding 57 
 
 XIV. The Mysterious Petticoat. . . 66 
 XV. Still occupied with the Petti- 
 coat 73 
 
 XVI. Clears up my Mysterious Behav- 
 iour OF the Last Chapter . . 79 
 XVII. The Name upon the Petticoat . 82 
 XVIII. In which the Name of a Great 
 Poet is cried out in a Solitary 
 
 Place 86 
 
 XIX. Why the Stranger would not 
 lose his Shelley for the 
 World 93 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 I. In which I decide to be Young 
 
 again 103 
 
 II. At the Sign of the Singing Stream 106 
 
 III. In which I SAVE a Useful Life . 112 
 
 IV. 'T is of Nicolete and her Bower 
 
 IN THE WiLDWOOD 1 20 
 
 V. 'TiS OF AUCASSIN AND NiCOLETE . 1 26
 
 CONTENTS ix 
 
 Chapter Pagb 
 
 VI. A Fairy Tale and its Fairy Tail- 
 ors 132 
 
 VII. From the Morning Star to the 
 
 Moon . 142 
 
 VIII. The Kind of Thing that happens 
 
 IN the Moon 150 
 
 IX. Written by Moonlight 155 
 
 X. How one makes Love at Thirty . 160 
 
 XI. How ONE plays the Hero at Thirty 166 
 XII. In which I REVIEW MY Actions and 
 
 RENEW MY Resolutions .... 170 
 
 BOOK III 
 
 I. In which I RETURN TO MY RiGHT 
 
 Age and encounter a Common 
 Object of the Country . . . 176 
 II. In which I heal a Bicycle and 
 
 come to the Wheel of Pleasure 180 
 
 III. Two Town Mice at a Country Inn 186 
 
 IV. Marriage A la Mode 194 
 
 V. Concerning the Haven of Yellow- 
 sands 204 
 
 VI. The Moorland of the Apocalypse 207 
 VII. "Come UNTO these Yellow Sands!" 219
 
 X CONTENTS 
 
 Thaptrr PAr.R 
 
 VI II. The Twelve Golden-haired Bar- 
 
 6 
 
 MAHIS 
 
 ■yy 
 
 IX. Sylvia Jov 234 
 
 X. In which once more I become oc- 
 cupied IN MY own Affairs . . 249 
 XI. "The Hour for which the Years 
 
 DID sigh" . 261 
 
 XII. At the CAFt DE LA Paix .... 267 
 
 XIII. The Innocence of Paris .... 276 
 
 XIV. End of Book Three 287 
 
 BOOK IV 
 
 THE POSTSCRIPT TO A PILGRIMAGE 
 
 I. Six Years After 290 
 
 II. Grace o' God 294 
 
 III. The Golden Girl 304
 
 Gennem de Man^e til En I I 
 
 "A"
 
 BOOK I 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 AN OLD HOUSE AND ITS BACHELOR 
 
 When the knell of my thirtieth birthday- 
 sounded, I suddenly realised, with a deso- 
 late feeling at the heart, that I was alone in 
 the world. It was true I had many and 
 good friends, and I was blessed with inter- 
 ests and occupations which I had often 
 declared sufficient to satisfy any not too 
 exacting human being. Moreover, a small 
 but sufficient competency was mine, allow- 
 ing me reasonable comforts, and the luxuries 
 of a small but choice library, and a small 
 but choice garden. These heavenly bless- 
 ings had seemed more than enough for nearly 
 five years, during which the good sister and 
 I had kept house together, leading a life of
 
 2 THE QUEST OF 
 
 tranquil happy days. Friends and books 
 and flowers! It was, we said, a good world, 
 and I, simpleton, — pretty and dainty as 
 Margaret was, — deemed it would go on for- 
 ever. But, alas ! one day came a Faust into 
 our garden, — a good F'aust, with no friend 
 Mephistopheles, — and took Margaret from 
 me. It is but a month since they were 
 married, and the rice still lingers in the 
 crevices of the pathway down to the quaint 
 old iron-work gate. Yes ! they have gone 
 off to spend their honeymoon, and Margaret 
 has written to me twice to say how happy 
 they are together in the Hesperides. Dear 
 happiness! Selfish, indeed, were he who 
 would envy you one petal of that wonderful 
 rose — Rosa Mundi — God has given you to 
 gather. 
 
 But, all the same, the reader will admit 
 that it must be lonely for me, and not 
 another sister left to take pity on me, all 
 somewhere happily settled down in the 
 Fortunate Isles. 
 
 Poor lonely old house! do you, too, miss 
 the light step of your mistress.-* No longer 
 shall her little silken figure flit up and down
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 3 
 
 your quiet staircases, no more deck out your 
 silent rooms with flowers, humming the 
 while some happy little song. 
 
 The little piano is dumb night after night, 
 its candles unlighted, and there is no one to 
 play Chopin to us now as the day dies, and 
 the shadows stoop out of their corners to 
 listen in vain. Old house, old house! We 
 are alone, quite alone, — there is no mistake 
 about that, — and the soul has gone out of 
 both of us. And as for the garden, there is 
 no company there; that is loneliest of all. 
 The very sunlight looks desolation, falling 
 through the thick-blossoming apple-trees as 
 through the chinks and crevices of deserted 
 Egyptian cities. 
 
 While as for the books — well, never talk 
 to me again about the companionship of 
 books ! For just when one needs them most 
 of all they seem suddenly to have grown 
 dull and unsympathetic, not a word of com- 
 fort, not a charm anywhere in them to make 
 us forget the slow-moving hours; whereas, 
 when Margaret was here — but it is of no 
 use to say any more! Everything was quite 
 different when Margaret was here: that is
 
 4 THE QUEST OF 
 
 enough. Margaret has gone away to the 
 Fortunate Isles. Of course she '11 come 
 to see us now and again; but it won't be 
 the same thing. Yes! old echoing silent 
 House of Joy that is Gone, we are quite 
 alone. Now, what is to be done?
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 IN WHICH I DECIDE TO GO ON PILGRIMAGE 
 
 Though I have this bad habit of soliloquis- 
 ing, and indeed am absurd enough to attempt 
 conversation with a house, yet the reader 
 must realise from the beginning that I am 
 still quite a young man. I talked a little 
 just now as though I were an octogenarian. 
 Actually, as I said, I am but just gone 
 thirty, and I may reasonably regard life, as 
 the saying is, all before me. I was a little 
 down-hearted when I wrote yesterday. Be- 
 sides, I wrote at the end of the afternoon, a 
 melancholy time. The morning is the time 
 to write. We are all — that is, those of us 
 who sleep well — optimists in the morning. 
 And the world is sad enough without our 
 writing books to make it sadder. The rest 
 of this book, I promise you, shall be written 
 of a morning. This book! oh, yes, I for-
 
 6 THE QUEST OF 
 
 got ! — I am going to write a book. A book 
 about what? Well, that must be as God 
 wills. But listen! As I lay in bed this 
 morning between sleeping and waking, an 
 idea came riding on a sunbeam into my 
 room, — a mad, whimsical idea, but one that 
 suits my mood; and put briefly, it is this: 
 how is it that I, a not unpresentable young 
 man, a man not without accomplishments 
 or experience, should have gone all these 
 years without finding that 
 
 " Not impossible she 
 Who shall command my heart and me," — 
 
 without meeting at some turning of the 
 way the mystical Golden Girl, — without, 
 in short, finding a wife.'' 
 
 "Then," suggested the idea, with a blush 
 for its own absurdity, "why not go on pil- 
 grimage and seek her? I don't believe 
 you'll find her. She isn't usually found 
 after thirty. But you '11 no doubt have good 
 fun by the way, and fall in with many pleas- 
 ant adventures." 
 
 " A brave idea, indeed ! " I cried. " By 
 Heaven, I will take stick and knapsack and
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 7 
 
 walk right away from my own front door, 
 right away where the road leads, and see 
 what happens." And now, if the reader 
 please, we will make a start.
 
 THE QUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 ' AN INDICTMENT OF SPRING 
 
 "Marry! an odd adventure!" I said to my- 
 self, as I stepped along in the spring morning 
 air; for, being a pilgrim, I was involuntarily 
 in a mediaeval frame of mind, and "Marry! 
 an odd adventure ! " came to my lips as though 
 I had been one of that famous company that 
 once started from the Tabard on a day in 
 spring. 
 
 It had been the spring, it will be remem- 
 bered, that had prompted them to go on 
 pilgrimage; and me, too, the spring was fill- 
 ing with strange, undefinable longings, and 
 though I flattered myself that I had set out 
 in pursuance of a definitely taken resolve, I 
 had really no more freedom in the matter 
 than the children who followed at the heels 
 of the mad piper. 
 
 A mad piper, indeed, this spring, with his 
 wonderful lying music, — ever lying, yet ever
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 9 
 
 convincing, for when was Spring known to 
 keep his word ? Yet year after year we give 
 eager belief to his promises. He may have 
 consistently broken them for fifty years, yet 
 this year he will keep them. This year the 
 dream will come true, the ship come home. 
 This year the very dead we have loved shall 
 come back to us again : for Spring can even 
 lie like that. There is nothing he will not 
 promise the poor hungry human heart, with 
 his innocent-looking daisies and those prac- 
 tised liars the birds. Why, one branch of 
 hawthorn against the sky promises more 
 than all the summers of time can pay, and a 
 pond ablaze with yellow lilies awakens such 
 answering splendours and enchantments in 
 mortal bosoms, — blazons, it would seem, so 
 august a message from the hidden heart of 
 the world, — that ever afterwards, for one who 
 has looked upon it, the most fortunate human 
 existence must seem a disappointment. 
 
 So I, too, with the rest of the world, was 
 following in the wake of the magical music. 
 The lie it was drawing me by is perhaps 
 Spring's oldest, commonest lie, — the lying 
 promise of the Perfect Woman, the Quite
 
 lo THE QUEST OF 
 
 Iinpossiblc She. Who h;is not dreamed of 
 her, — who that can dream at all? I sup- 
 pose that the dreams of our modern youth 
 are entirely commercial. In the morning of 
 life they are rapt by intoxicating visions of 
 some great haberdashery business, beckoned 
 to by the voluptuous enticements of the 
 legal profession, or maybe the Holy Grail 
 they forswear all else to seek is a snug edi- 
 torial chair. These quests and dreams were 
 not for me. Since I was man I have had 
 but one dream, — namely, Woman. Alas ! 
 till this my thirtieth year I have found only 
 women. No ! that is disloyal, disloyal to 
 my First Love; for this is sadly true, — 
 that we always find the Golden Girl in our 
 first love, and lose her in our second. 
 
 I wonder if the reader would care to hear 
 about my First Love, of whom I am naturally 
 thinking a good deal this morning, under 
 the demoralising influences of the fresh air, 
 blue sky, and various birds and flowers. 
 More potent intoxicants these than any that 
 need licenses for their purveyance, respon- 
 sible — see the poets — for no end of human 
 foolishness.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL ii 
 
 I was about to tell the story of my First 
 Love, but on second thoughts I decide not. 
 It will keep, and I feel hungry, and yonder 
 seems a dingle where I can lie and open my 
 knapsack, eat, drink, and doze among the 
 sun-flecked shadows.
 
 12 THE GUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 IN WHICH I EAT AND DREAM 
 
 The girl we go to meet is the girl we have 
 met before. I evolved this sage reflection, 
 as, lost deep down in the green alleys of the 
 dingle, having fortified the romantic side of 
 my nature with sandwiches and sherry, I 
 lazily put the question to myself as to what 
 manner of girl I expected the Golden Girl 
 to be. A man who goes seeking should 
 have some notion of what he goes out to seek. 
 Had I any ideal by which to test and 
 measure the damsels of the world who were 
 to pass before my critical choosing eye."* 
 Had I ever met any girl in the past who 
 would serve approximately as a model, — any 
 girl, in fact, I would very much like to meet 
 again? I was very sleepy, and while trying 
 to make up my mind I fell asleep; and lo!
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 13 
 
 the sandwiches and sherry brought me a 
 dream that I could not but consider of good 
 omen. And this was the dream. 
 
 I thought my quest had brought me into 
 a strange old haunted forest, and that I had 
 thrown myself down to rest at the gnarled 
 mossy root of a great oak-tree, while all 
 about me was nought but fantastic shapes 
 and capricious groups of gold-green bole and 
 bough, wondrous alleys ending in mysteri- 
 ous coverts, and green lanes of exquisite 
 turf that seemed to have been laid down in 
 expectation of some milk-white queen or 
 goddess passing that way. And so still the 
 forest was you could have heard an acorn 
 drop or a bird call from one end of it to the 
 other. The exquisite silence was evidently 
 waiting for the exquisite voice, that presently 
 not so much broke as mingled with it, like a 
 swan swimming through a lake. 
 
 "Whom seek you.?" said, or rather sung, 
 a planetary voice right at my shoulder. But 
 three short unmusical Saxon words, yet it 
 was as though a mystical strain of music 
 had passed through the wood. 
 
 " Whom seek you ? " and again the lovely
 
 14 THE QUEST OF 
 
 speech flowered upon the silence, as white 
 water-lilies on the surface of some shaded 
 pool. 
 
 "The Golden Girl/' I answered simply, 
 turning my head, and looking half sideways 
 and half upwards; and behold! the tree at 
 whose foot I lay had opened its rocky side, 
 and in the cleft, like a long lily-bud sliding 
 from its green sheath, stood a dryad, and 
 my speech failed and my breath went as I 
 looked upon her beauty, for which mortality 
 has no simile. Yet was there something 
 about her of the earth-sweetness that clings 
 even to the loveliest, star-ambitious, earth- 
 born thing. She was not all immortal, as 
 man is not all mortal. She was the sweet- 
 ness of the strength of the oak, the soul born 
 of the sun kissing its green leaves in the 
 still Memnonian mornings, of moon and 
 stars kissing its green leaves in the stiU 
 Trophonian nights. 
 
 "The maid you seek," said she, and again 
 she broke the silence like the moon break- 
 ing through the clouds, "what manner of 
 maid is she.? For a maid abides in this 
 wood, maybe it is she whom you seek. Is
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 15 
 
 she but a lovely face you seek? Is she 
 but a lofty mind ? Is she but a beautiful 
 soul ? " 
 
 " Maybe she is all these, though no one 
 only, and more besides," I answered. 
 
 "It is well," she replied, "but have you 
 in your heart no image of her you seek? 
 Else how should you know her should you 
 some day come to meet her? " 
 
 "I have no image of her," I said. "I 
 cannot picture her; but I shall know her, 
 know her inerrably as these your wood chil- 
 dren find out each other untaught, as the 
 butterfly that has never seen his kindred 
 knows his painted mate, passing on the 
 wing all others by. Only when the lark 
 shall mate with the nightingale, and the 
 honey-bee and the clock-beetle keep house 
 together, shall I wed another maid. Fair 
 maybe she will not be, though fair to me. 
 Wise maybe she will not be, though wise to 
 me. For riches I care not, and of her kindred 
 I have no care. All I know is that just to 
 sit by her will be bliss, just to touch her 
 bliss, just to hear her speak bliss beyond alf 
 mortal telling."
 
 i6 THE QUEST OF 
 
 Thereat the Sweetness of the Strength of 
 the Oak smiled upon me and said, — 
 
 "Follow yonder green path till it leads 
 you into a little grassy glade, where is a 
 crystal well and a hut of woven boughs hard 
 by, and you shall see her whom you seek." 
 
 And as she spoke she faded suddenly, and 
 the side of the oak was once more as the 
 solid rock. With hot heart I took the green 
 winding path, and presently came the little 
 grassy glade, and the bubbling crystal well, 
 and the hut of wattled boughs, and, looking 
 through the open door of the hut, I saw a 
 lovely girl lying asleep in her golden hair. 
 She smiled sweetly in her sleep, and stretched 
 out her arms softly, as though to enfold the 
 dear head of her lover. And, ere I knew, I 
 was bending over her, and as her sweet 
 breath came and went I whispered: "Grace 
 o' God, I am here. I have sought you 
 through the world, and found you at last. 
 Grace o' God, I have come." 
 
 And then I thought her great eyes opened, 
 as when the sun sweeps, clear blue spaces in 
 the morning sky. "Flower o' Men," then 
 said she, low and sweet, — "Flower o' Men,
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 17 
 
 is it you indeed? As you have sought, so 
 have I waited, waited ..." And thereat 
 her arms stole round my neck, and I awoke, 
 and Grace o' God was suddenly no more 
 than a pretty name that my dream had given 
 me. 
 
 "A pretty dream," said my soul, "though 
 a little boyish for thirty." "And a most 
 excellent sherry," added my body.
 
 i8 THE QUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 CONCERNING THE PERFECT WOMAN, AND 
 THEREFORE CONCERNING ALL FEMININE 
 READERS 
 
 As I once more got under way, my thoughts 
 slowly loitered back to the theme which had 
 been occupying them before I dropped 
 asleep. What was my working hypothesis 
 of the Perfect Woman, towards whom I was 
 thus leisurely strolling? She might be 
 defined, I reflected, as The Woman Who Is 
 Worthy Of Us; but the improbability wnicti 
 every healthily conceited young man must 
 feel of ever finding such a one made the 
 definition seem a little unserviceable. Or, 
 if you prefer, since we seem to be dealing 
 with impossibles, we might turn about and 
 more truly define her as The Woman of 
 Whom We are Worthy, for who dare say that 
 she exists? If, again, she were defined as the
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 19 
 
 Woman our More Fortunate Friend Mar- 
 ries, her unapproachableness would rob the 
 definition of any practical value. Other 
 generalisations proving equally unprofitable, 
 I began scientifically to consider in detail 
 the attributes of the supposititious paragon, 
 — attributes of body and mind and heart. 
 This was soon done; but again, as I thus / 
 
 conned all those virtues which I was to 
 expect united in one unhappy woman, the 
 result was still unsatisfying, for I began to 
 perceive that it was really not perfection 
 that I was in search of. As I added virtue 
 after virtue to the female monster in my 
 mind, and the result remained still inani- 
 mate and unalluring, I realised that the lack 
 I was conscious of was not any new perfec- 
 tion, but just one or two honest human 
 imperfections. And this, try as I would, 
 was just what I could not imagine. 
 
 For, if you reflect a moment, you will see 
 that, while it is easy to choose what virtues 
 we would have our wife possess, it is all but 
 impossible to imagine those faults we would 
 desire in her, which I think most lovers 
 would admit add piquancy to the loved one.
 
 20 THE QUEST OF 
 
 that fascinating wayward imperfection which 
 paradoxically makes her perfect. 
 
 Faults in the abstract are each and all so 
 uninviting, not to say alarming, but, asso- 
 ciated with certain eyes and hair and tender 
 little gowns, it is curious how they lose 
 their terrors; and, as with vice in the poet's 
 image, we end by embracing what we began 
 by dreading. You see the fault becomes a 
 virtue when it is hers, the treason prospers; 
 wherefore, no doubt, the impossibility of 
 imagining it. What particular fault will suit 
 a particular unknown girl is obviously as 
 difficult to determine as in what colours she 
 will look her best. 
 
 So, I say, I plied my brains in vain for 
 that becoming fault. It was the same 
 whether I considered her beauty, her heart, 
 or her mind. A charming old Italian writer 
 has laid down the canons of perfect feminine 
 beauty with much nicety in a delicious dis- 
 course, which, as he delivered it in a sixteenth- 
 century Florentine garden to an audience of 
 beautiful and noble ladies, an audience not 
 too large to be intimate and not too small 
 to be embarrassing, it was his delightful
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 21 
 
 good fortune and privilege to illustrate by 
 pretty and sly references to the characteristic 
 beauties of the several ladies seated like a 
 ring of roses around him. Thus he would 
 refer to the shape of Madonna Lampiada's 
 sumptuous eyelids, and to her shell-like 
 ears, to the correct length and shape of 
 Madonna Amororrisca's nose, to the lily 
 tower of Madonna Verdespina's throat; nor 
 would the unabashed old Florentine shrink 
 from calling attention to the unfairness of 
 Madonna Selvaggia's covering up her dainty 
 bosom, just as he was about to discourse 
 upon "those two hills of snow and of roses 
 with two little crowns of fine rubies on their 
 peaks." How could a man lecture if his 
 diagrams were going to behave like that ! 
 Then, feigning a tiff, he would close his 
 manuscript, and all the ladies with their 
 birdlike voices would beseech him with 
 " Oh, no, Messer Firenzuola, please go on 
 again; it's so charming!" while, as if by 
 accident, Madonna Selvaggia's moonlike 
 bosom would once more slip out its heavenly 
 silver, perceiving which, Messer Firenzuola 
 would open his manuscript again and pro- 
 ceed with his sweet learning,
 
 22 THE QUEST OF 
 
 Happy Fircnzuola! Oh, days that are 
 no more ! 
 
 By selecting for his illustrations one 
 feature from one lady and another from 
 another, Messer Firenzuola builds up an 
 ideal of the Beautiful Woman, which, were 
 she to be possible, would probably be as 
 faultily faultless as the Perfect Woman, 
 were she possible. Moreover, much about 
 the same time as Firenzuola was writing, 
 Botticelli's blonde, angular, retrouss^ women 
 were breaking every one of that beauty- 
 master's canons, perfect in beauty none the 
 less; and lovers then, and perhaps particu- 
 larly now, have found the perfect beauty in 
 faces to which Messer Firenzuola would 
 have denied the name of face at all, by 
 virtue of a quality which indeed he has 
 tabulated, but which is far too elusive and 
 undcfinable, too spiritual for him truly to have 
 understood, — a quality which nowadays we 
 are tardily recognising as the first and last 
 of all beauty, either of nature or art, — tlie 
 supreme, truly divine, because material- 
 istically unaccountable, quality of Charm! 
 
 " Beauty that makes holy earth and heaven 
 May have faults from head to feet."
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 23 
 
 O loveliest and best-loved face that ever 
 hallowed the eyes that now seek for you in 
 vain ! Such was your strange lunar magic, 
 such the light not even death could dim. 
 And such may be the loveliest and best- 
 loved face for you who are reading these 
 pages, — faces little understood on earth 
 because they belong to heaven. 
 
 There is indeed only one law of beauty 
 on which we may rely, — that it invariably 
 breaks all the laws laid down for it by the 
 professors of aesthetics. All the beauty that 
 has ever been in the world has broken the 
 laws of all previous beauty, and unwillingly 
 dictated laws to the beauty that succeeded 
 it, — laws which that beauty has no less 
 spiritedly broken, to prove in turn dictator 
 to its successor. 
 
 The immortal sculptors, painters, and 
 poets have always done exactly what their 
 critics forbade them to do. The obedient in 
 art are always the forgotten. 
 
 Likewise beautiful women have always 
 been a law unto themselves. Who could 
 have prophesied in what way any of these 
 inspired law-breakers would break the law,
 
 24 THE QUEST OF 
 
 what new type of perfect imperfection they 
 would create? 
 
 So we return to the Perfect Woman, hav- 
 ing gained this much knowledge of her, — 
 that her perfection is nothing more or less 
 than her unique, individual, charming im- 
 perfection, and that she is simply the woman 
 we love and who is fool enough to love us.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 2$ 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 IN WHICH THE AUTHOR ANTICIPATES DIS- 
 CONTENT ON THE PART OF HIS READER 
 
 "But come," I imagine some reader com- 
 plaining, " is n't it high time for something 
 to happen ? " No doubt it is, but what am I 
 to do? I am no less discontented. Is it not 
 even more to my interest than to the reader's 
 for something to happen ? Here have I been 
 tramping along since breakfast-time, and 
 now it is late in the afternoon, but never a 
 feather of her dove's wings, never a flutter 
 of her angel's robes have I seen. It is dis- 
 heartening, for one naturally expects to find 
 anything we seek a few minutes after start- 
 ing out to seek it, and I confess that I 
 expected to find my golden mistress within 
 a very few hours of leaving home. How- 
 ever, had that been the case, there would
 
 26 THE QUEST OF 
 
 have been no story, as the novelists say, and 
 I trust, as he goes on, the reader may feel 
 with me that that would have been a pity. 
 Besides, with that prevision given to an 
 author, I am strongly of opinion that some- 
 thing will happen before long. And if the 
 worst comes to the worst, there is always 
 that story of my First Love wherewith to 
 fill the time. Meanwhile I am approaching 
 a decorative old Surrey town, little more 
 than a cluster of ripe old inns, to one of 
 which I have much pleasure in inviting the 
 reader to dinner.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 27 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 prandial 
 
 Dinner ! 
 
 Is there a more beautiful word in the lan- 
 guage ? 
 
 Dinner ! 
 
 Let the beautiful word come as a refrain 
 to and fro this chapter. 
 
 Dinner ! 
 
 Just eating and drinking, nothing more, 
 but so much ! 
 
 Drinking, indeed, has had its laureates. 
 Yet would I offer my mite of prose in its 
 honour. And when I say "drinking," I 
 speak not of smuggled gin or of brandy 
 bottles held fiercely by the neck till' they 
 are empty. 
 
 Nay, but of that lonely glass in the social 
 solitude of the tavern, — alone, but not 
 alone, for the glass is sure to bring a dream 
 to bear it company, and it is a poor dream
 
 28 THE QUEST OF 
 
 that cannot raise a song. And what greater 
 felicity than to be alone in a tavern with 
 your last new song, just born and yet still 
 a tingling part of you. 
 
 Drinking has indeed been sung, but why, 
 I have heard it asked, have we no "Eating 
 Songs.? " — for eating is, surely, a fine pleas- 
 ure. Many practise it already, and it is be- 
 coming more general every day. 
 
 I speak not of the finicking joy of the 
 gourmet, but the joy of an honest appetite 
 in ecstasy, the elemental joy of absorbing 
 quantities of fresh simple food, — mere roast 
 lamb, new potatoes, and peas of living green. 
 
 It is, indeed, an absorbing pleasure. It 
 needs all our attention. You must eat as 
 you kiss, so exacting are the joys of the 
 mouth, — talking, for example. The quiet 
 eye may be allowed to participate, and some- 
 times the ear, where the music is played 
 upon a violin, and that a Stradivarius. A 
 well-kept lawn, with six-hundred-years-old 
 cedars and a twenty-feet yew hedge, will add 
 distinction to the meal. Nor should one 
 ever eat without a seventeenth-century poet 
 in an old yellow-leaved edition upon the
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 29 
 
 table, not to be read, of course, any more 
 than the flowers are to be eaten, but just to 
 make music of association very softly to our 
 thoughts. 
 
 Some diners have wine too upon the table, 
 and in the pauses of thinking what a divine 
 mystery dinner is, they eat. 
 
 For dinner is a mystery, — a mystery of 
 which even the greatest chef knows but 
 little, as a poet knows not, 
 
 " with all his lore, 
 Wherefore he sang, or whence the mandate sped." 
 
 "Even our digestion is governed by 
 angels," said Blake; and if you will resist 
 the trivial inclination to substitute "bad 
 angels," is there really any greater mystery 
 than the process by which beef is turned 
 into brains, and beer into beauty? Every 
 beautiful woman we see has been made out 
 of beefsteaks. It is a solemn thought, — and 
 the finest poem that was ever written came 
 out of a grey pulpy mass such as we make 
 brain sauce of. 
 
 And with these grave thoughts for grace 
 let us sit down to dinner. 
 
 Dinner I
 
 30 THE QUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 STILL PRANDIAL 
 
 What wine shall we have? I confess I am 
 no judge of wines, except when they are 
 bad. To-night I feel inclined to allow my 
 choice to be directed by sentiment; and as 
 we are on so pretty a pilgrimage, would it 
 not be appropriate to drink Liebfraumilch? 
 
 Hock is full of fancy, and all wines are by 
 their very nature full of reminiscence, the 
 golden tears and red blood of summers that 
 are gone. 
 
 Forgive me, therefore, if I grow reminis- 
 cent. Indeed, I fear that the hour for the 
 story of my First Love has come. But first, 
 notice the waitress. I confess, whether 
 beautiful or plain, — not too plain, — women 
 who earn their own living have a peculiar 
 attraction for me.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 31 
 
 I hope the Golden Girl will not turn out 
 to be a duchess. As old Campion sings, — 
 
 ** I care not for those ladies 
 
 Who must be wooed and prayed ; 
 Give me kind Amaryllis, 
 The wanton country-maid." 
 
 Town-maids too of the same pattern. 
 Whether in town or country, give me the 
 girls that work. The Girls That Work ! But 
 evidently it is high time we began a new 
 chapter.
 
 32 THE QUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE LEGEND OF HEBE, OR THE HEAVENLY 
 HOUSEMAID 
 
 Yes, I blush to admit it, my First Love was 
 a housemaid. So was she known on this dull 
 earth of ours, but in heaven — in the heaven 
 of my imagination, at all events — she was, 
 of course, a goddess. How she managed to 
 keep her disguise I never could understand. 
 To me she was so obviously dea certe. The 
 nimbus was so apparent. Yet no one seemed 
 to see it but me. I have heard her scolded 
 as though she were any ordinary earthly 
 housemaid, and I have seen the butcher's 
 boy trying to flirt with her without a touch 
 of reverence. 
 
 Maybe I understood because I saw her 
 in that early hour of the morning when 
 even the stony Memnon sings, in that mys- 
 tical light of the young day when divine
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 33 
 
 exiled things, condemned to rough bondage 
 through the noon, are for a short magical 
 hour their own celestial selves, their un- 
 earthly glory as yet unhidden by any earthly 
 disguise. 
 
 Neither fairies nor fauns, dryads nor 
 nymphs of the forest pools, have really 
 passed away from the world. You have 
 only to get up early enough to meet them in 
 the meadows. They rarely venture abroad 
 after six. All day long they hide in uncouth 
 enchanted forms. They change maybe to a 
 field of turnips, and I have seen a farmer 
 priding himself on a flock of sheep that I 
 knew were really a most merry company of 
 dryads and fauns in disguise. I had but to 
 make the sign of the cross, sprinkle some 
 holy water upon them, and call them b}) 
 their sweet secret names, and the whole 
 rout had been off to the woods, with mad 
 gambol and song, before the eyes of the 
 astonished farmer. 
 
 It was so with Hebe. She was really a 
 little gold-haired blue-eyed dryad, whose 
 true home was a wild white cherry-tree that 
 grew in some scattered woodland behind the
 
 34 THE QUEST OF 
 
 old country-house of my boyhood. In spring- 
 time how that naughty tree used to flash its 
 silver nakedness of blossom for miles across 
 the furze and scattered birches ! 
 
 I might have known it was Hebe. 
 
 Alas! it no longer bares its bosom with 
 so dazzling a prodigality, for it is many a 
 day since it was uprooted. The little dryad 
 long since fled away weeping, — fled away, 
 said evil tongues, fled away to the town. 
 
 Well do I remember our last meeting. 
 Returning home one evening, I met her at 
 the lodge-gate hurrying away. Our loves 
 had been discovered, and my mother had 
 shuddered to think that so pagan a thing 
 had lived so long in a Christian house. I 
 vowed — ah! what did I not vow? — and then 
 we stole sadly together to comfort our aching 
 hearts under cover of the woodland. For 
 the last time the wild cherry-tree bloomed, 
 — wonderful blossom, glittering with tears, 
 and gloriously radiant with stormy lights of 
 wild passion and wilder hopes. 
 
 My faith lived valiantly till the next 
 spring. It was Hebe who was faithless. 
 The cherry-tree was dead, for its dryad had
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 35 
 
 gone, — fled, said evil tongues, fled away to 
 the town! 
 
 But as yet, in the time to which my 
 thoughts return, our sweet secret mornings 
 were known only to ourselves. It was my 
 custom then to rise early, to read Latin 
 authors, — thanks to Hebe, still unread. I 
 used to light my fire and make tea for 
 myself, till one rapturous morning I discov- 
 ered that Hebe was fond of rising early too, 
 and that she would like to light my fire and 
 make my tea. After a time she began to 
 sweeten it for me. And then she would sit 
 on my knee, and we would translate Catullus 
 together, — into English kisses; for she was 
 curiously interested in the learned tongue. 
 
 How lovely she used to look with the 
 morning sun turning her hair to golden mist, 
 and dancing in the blue deeps of her eyes; 
 and once when by chance she had forgotten 
 to fasten her gown, I caught glimpses of a 
 bosom that was like two happy handfuls of 
 wonderful white cherries . . . 
 
 She wore a marvellous little printed gown. 
 And here I may say that I have never to this 
 day understood objections which were after-
 
 36 THE QUEST OF 
 
 wards raised against my early attachment to 
 print. The only legitimate attachment to 
 print stuff, I was told, was to print stuff in 
 the form of blouse, tennis, or boating costume. 
 Yet, thought I, I would rather smuggle one 
 of those little print gowns into my berth 
 than all the silks a sea-faring friend of mine 
 takes the trouble to smuggle from far 
 Cathay. However, every one to his taste; 
 for me, 
 
 No silken madam, by your leave, 
 Though wondrous, wondrous she be, 
 
 Can lure this heart — upon my sleeve — 
 From little pink-print Hebe. 
 
 For I found beneath that pretty print such 
 a heart as seldom beats beneath your satin, 
 warm and wild as a bird's. I used to put 
 my ear to it sometimes to listen if it beat 
 right. Ah, reader, it was like putting your 
 ear to the gate of heaven. 
 
 And once I made a song for her, which 
 ran like this: — 
 
 There grew twin apples high on a bough 
 
 Within an orchard fair ; 
 The tree was all oi gold, I vow, 
 
 And the apples of silver were.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL i7 
 
 And whoso kisseth those apples high, 
 
 Who kisseth once is a king, 
 Who kisseth twice shall never die. 
 
 Who kisseth thrice — oh, were it I !— - 
 May ask for anything. 
 
 Hebe blushed, and for answer whispered 
 something too sweet to tell. 
 
 "Dear little head sunning over with 
 curls," were I to meet you now, what would 
 happen? Ah! to meet you now were too 
 painfully to measure the remnant of my 
 youth.
 
 38 THE QUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 AGAIN ON FOOT — THE GIRLS THAT NEVER 
 CAN BE MINE 
 
 Next morning I was afoot early, bent on my 
 quest in right good earnest; for I had a 
 remorseful feeling that I had not been suffi- 
 ciently diligent the day before, had spent 
 too much time in dreaming and moralising, 
 in which opinion I am afraid the reader will 
 agree. 
 
 So I was up and out of the town while as 
 yet most of the inhabitants were in the 
 throes of getting up. Somewhere too She, 
 the Golden One, the White Woman, was 
 drowsily tossing the night-clothes from her 
 limbs and rubbing her sleepy eyes. William 
 Morris's lovely song came into my mind, — 
 
 " And midst them all, perchance, my love 
 Is waking, and doth gently move 
 And stretch her soft arms out to me, 
 Forgetting thousand leagues of sea."
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 39 
 
 Perhaps she was in the very town I was 
 leaving behind. Perhaps we had slept 
 within a few houses of each other. Who 
 could tell ? 
 
 Looking back at the old town, with its 
 one steep street climbing the white face of 
 the chalk hill, I remembered what wonderful 
 exotic women Thomas Hardy had found eat- 
 ing their hearts out behind the windows of 
 dull country high streets, through which hung 
 waving no banners of romance, outwardly 
 as unpromising of adventure as the windows 
 of the town I had left. And then turn- 
 ing my steps across a wide common, which 
 ran with gorse and whortleberry bushes away 
 on every side to distant hilly horizons, 
 swarthy with pines, and dotted here and 
 there with stone granges and white villages, 
 I thought of all the women within that 
 circle, any one of whom might prove the 
 woman I sought, — from milkmaids crossing 
 the meadows, their strong shoulders strain- 
 ing with the weight of heavy pails, to fine 
 ladies dying of enmn in their country-houses ; 
 pretty farmers' daughters surreptitiousfy 
 reading novels, and longing for London and
 
 40 THE QUEST OF 
 
 "life;" passionate young farmers' wives 
 already weary of their doltish lords; bright- 
 eyed bar-maids buried alive in country inns, 
 and wondering "whatever possessed them" 
 to leave Manchester, — for bar-maids seem 
 always to come from Manchester, — all long- 
 ing modestly, said I, to set eyes on a man 
 like me, a man of romance, a man of feeling, 
 a man, if you like, to run away with. 
 
 My heart flooded over with tender pity for 
 these poor sweet women — though perhaps 
 chiefly for my own sad lot in not encounter- 
 ing them, — and I conceived a great compre- 
 hensive love-poem to be entitled "The Girls 
 that never can be Mine." Perhaps before 
 the end of our tramp together, I shall have 
 a few verses of it to submit to the elegant 
 taste of the reader, but at present I have not 
 advanced beyond the title.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 41 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 an old man of the hills, and the 
 schoolmaster's story 
 
 While occupying myself with these no 
 doubt wanton reflections on the unfair di- 
 vision of opportunities in human life, I was 
 leisurely crossing the common, and presently 
 I came up with a pedestrian who, though I 
 had little suspected it as I caught sight of 
 him ahead, was destined by a kind provi- 
 dence to make more entertaining talk for me 
 in half an hour than most people provide in 
 a lifetime. 
 
 He was an oldish man, turned sixty, one 
 would say, and belonging, to judge from his 
 dress and general appearance, to what one 
 might call the upper labouring class. He 
 wore a decent square felt hat, a shabby 
 respectable overcoat, a workman's knitted 
 waistcoat, and workman's corduroys, and he
 
 42 THE QUEST OF 
 
 carried an umbrella. His upper part might 
 have belonged to a small well-to-do trades- 
 man, while his lower bore marks of recent 
 bricklaying. Without its being remarkable, 
 he had what one calls a good face, somewhat 
 aquiline in character, with a refined fore- 
 head and nose. His cheeks were shaved, 
 and his whitening beard and moustache 
 were worn somewhat after the fashion of 
 Charles Dickens. This gave a slight touch 
 of severity to a face that was full of quiet 
 strength. 
 
 Passing the time of day to each other, we 
 were soon in conversation, I asking him this 
 and that question about the neighbouring 
 country-side, of which I gathered he was an 
 old inhabitant. 
 
 "Yes," he said presently, "I was the first 
 to put stick or stone on Whortleberry 
 Common yonder. Fifteen years ago I built 
 my own wood cottage there, and now I 'm 
 rebuilding it of good Surrey stone." 
 
 "Do you mean that you are building it 
 yourself, with your own hands, no one to 
 help you.^ " I asked. 
 
 " Not so much as to carry a pail of water,"
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 43 
 
 he replied. " I 'm my own contractor, my 
 own carpenter, and my own bricklayer, and 
 I shall be sixty-seven come Michaelmas," he 
 added, by no means irrelevantly. 
 
 There was pride in his voice, — pardon- 
 able pride, I thought, for who of us would 
 not be proud to be able to build his own 
 house from floor to chimney.'' 
 
 " Sixty-seven, — a man can see and do a 
 good deal in that time," I said, not flatter- 
 ing myself on the originality of the remark, 
 but desiring to set him talking. In the 
 country, as elsewhere, we must forego pro- 
 fundity if we wish to be understood. 
 
 "Yes, sir," he said, "I have been about a 
 good deal in my time. I have seen pretty 
 well all of the world there is to see, and 
 sailed as far as ship could take me." 
 
 " Indeed, you have been a sailor too .-' " 
 
 "Twenty-two thousand miles of sea," he 
 continued, without directly answering my 
 remark. " Yes, Vancouver 's about as far as 
 any vessel need want to go; and then I have 
 caught seals off the coast of Labrador, and 
 walked my way through the raspberry plains 
 at the back of the White Mountains."
 
 44 THE QUEST OF 
 
 "Vancouver," "Labrador," "The White 
 Mountains," the very names, thus casually 
 mentioned on a Surrey heath, seemed full 
 of the sounding sea. Like talismans they 
 whisked one away to strange lands, across 
 vast distances of space imagination refused 
 to span. Strange to think that the shabby 
 little man at my side had them all fast 
 locked, pictures upon pictures, in his brain, 
 and as we were talking was back again in 
 goodness knows what remote latitude. 
 
 I kept looking at him and saying, 
 "Twenty-two thousand miles of sea! sixty- 
 seven ! and builds his own cottage ! " 
 
 In addition to all this he had found time 
 to be twenty-one years a policeman, and to 
 beget and rear successfully twelve children. 
 He was now, I gathered, living partly on 
 his pension, and spoke of this daughter mar- 
 ried, this daughter in service here, and that 
 daughter in service there, one son settled in 
 London and another in the States, with 
 something of a patriarchal pride, with the 
 independent air too of a man who could 
 honestly say to himself that, with few advan- 
 tages from fortune, having had, so to say, to
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 45 
 
 work his passage, every foot and hour of it, 
 across those twenty-two thousand miles and 
 those sixty-seven years, he had made a thor- 
 oughly creditable job of his life. 
 
 As we walked along I caught glimpses in 
 his vivid and ever-varying talk of the quali- 
 ties that had made his success possible. 
 They are always the same qualities! 
 
 A little pile of half-hewn stones, the 
 remains of a ruined wall, scattered by the 
 roadside caught his eye. 
 
 " I 've seen the time when I would n't have 
 left them stones lying out there," he said, 
 and presently, "Why, God bless you, I've 
 made my own boots before to-day. Give me 
 the tops and I '11 soon rig up a pair still." 
 
 And with all his success, and his evident 
 satisfaction with his lot, the man was 
 neither a prig nor a teetotaller. He had 
 probably seen too much of the world to be 
 either. Yet he had, he said, been too busy 
 all his life to spend much time in public- 
 houses, as we drank a pint of ale together 
 in the inn which stood at the end of the 
 common. 
 
 "No, it 's all well enough in its way, but
 
 46 THE QUKST OF 
 
 it swallows time," he remarked. "You see, 
 my wife and I have our own pin at home, 
 and when I 'ni a bit tired, I just draw a glass 
 for myself, and smoke a pipe, and there 's no 
 time wasted coming and going, and drinking 
 first with this and then with the other." 
 
 A little way past the inn we came upon a 
 notice-board whereon the lord of the manor 
 warned all wayfarers against trespassing on 
 the common by making encampments, light- 
 ing fires or cutting firewood thereon, and to 
 this fortunate circumstance I owe the most 
 interesting story my companion had to tell. 
 
 We had mentioned the lord of the manor 
 as we crossed the common, and the notice- 
 board brought him once more to the old 
 man's mind. 
 
 "Poor gentleman!" he said, pointing to 
 the board as though it was the lord of the 
 manor himself standing there, "I should n't 
 like to have had the trouble he 's had on my 
 shoulders." 
 
 " Indeed .''" I said interrogatively. 
 
 "Well, you see, sir," he continued, in- 
 stinctively lowering his voice to a confi- 
 dential impressiveness, "he married an
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 47 
 
 actress; a noble lady too she was, a fine 
 dashing merry lady as ever you saw. All 
 went well for a time, and then it suddenly 
 got whispered about that she and the village 
 schoolmaster were meeting each other at 
 nights, in the meadow-bottom at the end of 
 her own park. It lies over that way, — I 
 could take you to the very place. The 
 schoolmaster was a noble-looking young 
 man too, a devil-me-care blade of a fellow, 
 with a turn for poetry, they said, and a 
 merry man too, and much in request for 
 a song at The Moonrakers of an evening. 
 Many 's the night I 've heard the windows 
 rattling with the good company gathered 
 round him. Yes, he was a noble-looking 
 man, a noble-looking man," he repeated 
 wistfully, and with an evident sympathy 
 for the lovers which, I need hardly say, 
 won my heart. 
 
 "But how, I wonder, did they come to 
 know each other?" I interrupted, anxious 
 to learn all I could, even if I had to ask 
 stupid questions to learn it. 
 
 "Well, of course, no one can say how 
 these things come about. She was the lady
 
 48 THE QUEST OF 
 
 of the manor and the patroness of his school ; 
 and then, as I say, he was a very noble- 
 looking man, and probably took her fancy; 
 and, sir, whenever some women set their 
 hearts on a man there 's no stopping them. 
 Have him they will, whatever happens. 
 They can't help it, poor things! It's just 
 a freak of nature." 
 
 "Well, and how was it found out.'" I 
 again jogged him. 
 
 "One of Sir William's keepers played the 
 spy on them. He spread it all over the 
 place how he had seen them on moonlight 
 nights sitting together in the dingle, drink- 
 ing champagne, and laughing and talking as 
 merry as you please ; and, of course, it came 
 in time to Sir William — " 
 
 "You see that green lane there," he broke 
 off, pointing to a romantic path winding 
 along the heath side; " it was along there he 
 used to go of a night to meet her after every 
 one was in bed; and when it all came out 
 there was a regular cartload of bottles found 
 there. The squire had them all broken up, 
 but the pieces are there to this day. 
 
 "Yes," he again proceeded, "it hit Sir
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 49 
 
 William very hard. He's never been the 
 same man since." 
 
 I am afraid that my sympathies were less 
 with Sir William than better regulated sym- 
 pathies would have been. I confess that my 
 imagination was more occupied with that 
 picture of the two lovers making merry 
 together in the moonlit dingle. 
 
 Is it not, indeed, a fascinating little story, 
 with its piquant contrasts and its wild 
 love-at-all-costs .!• And how many such 
 stories are hidden about the country, lying 
 carelessly in rustic memories, if one only 
 knew where to find them ! 
 
 At this point my companion left me, and 
 I — well, I confess that I retraced my steps 
 to the common and rambled up that green 
 lane, along which the romantic schoolmaster 
 used to steal in the moonlight to the warm 
 arms of his love. How eagerly he had 
 trodden the very turf I was treading, — we 
 never know at what moment we are treading 
 sacred earth ! But for that old man, I had 
 passed along this path without a thrill. Had 
 I not but an hour ago stood upon this very 
 common, vainly, so it seemed, invoking the 
 
 4
 
 50 THE QUEST OF 
 
 spirits of passion and romance, and the grim 
 old common had never made a sign. And 
 now I stood in the very dingle where they 
 had so often and so wildly met; and it was 
 all gone, quite gone away for ever. The 
 hours that had seemed so real, the kisses 
 that had seemed like to last for ever, the 
 vows, the tears, all now as if they had never 
 been, gone on the four winds, lost in the 
 abysses of time and space. 
 
 And to think of all the thousands and 
 thousands of lovers who had loved no less 
 wildly and tenderly, made sweet these lanes 
 with their vows, made green these meadows 
 with their feet ; and they, too, all gone, 
 their bright eyes fallen to dust, their sweet 
 voices for ever put to silence. 
 
 To which I would add, for the benefit of 
 the profane, that I sought in yain for those 
 broken bottles.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 51 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE GIPSIES 
 
 I FELT lonely after losing my companion, 
 and I met nobody to take his place. In 
 fact, for a couple of hours I met nothing 
 worth mentioning, male or female, with the 
 exception of a gipsy caravan, which I sup- 
 pose was both; but it was a poor show. 
 Borrow would have blushed for it. In fact, 
 it is my humble opinion that the gipsies 
 have been overdone, just as the Alps have 
 been over-climbed. I have no great desire 
 to see Switzerland, for I am sure the Alps 
 must be greasy with being climbed. 
 
 Besides, the Alps and the gipsies, in 
 common with waterfalls and ruined castles, 
 belong to the ready-made operatic poetry of 
 the world, from which the last thrill has 
 long since departed. They are, so to say.
 
 5:* THE QUEST OF 
 
 public poetry, the public property of the 
 emotions, and no longer touch the private 
 heart or stir the private imagination. Our 
 fathers felt so much about them that there 
 is nothing left for us to feel. They are as 
 a rose whose fragrance has been exhausted 
 by greedy and indiscriminate smelling. I 
 would rather find a little Surrey common for 
 myself and idle about it a summer day, with 
 the other geese and donkeys, than climb the 
 tallest Alp. 
 
 Most gipsies are merely tenth-rate pro- 
 vincial companies, travelling with and vil- 
 lainously travestying Borrow' s great pieces 
 of " Lavengro " and " Romany Rye. " Dirty, 
 ill-looking, scowling men; dirty, slovenly, 
 and wickedly ugly women ; children to match, 
 snarling, filthy little curs, with a ready 
 beggar's whine on occasion. A gipsy 
 encampment to-day is little more than a 
 moving slum, a scab of squalor on the fair 
 face of the countryside. 
 
 But there was one little trifle of an inci- 
 dent that touched me as I passed this par- 
 ticular caravan. Evidently one of the vans 
 had come to grief, and several men of the
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 53 
 
 party were making a great show of repairing 
 it. After I had run the gauntlet of the 
 begging children, and was just out of ear- 
 shot of the group, I turned round to survey 
 it from a distance. It was encamped on a 
 slight rise of the undulating road, and from 
 where I stood tents and vans and men were 
 clearly silhouetted against the sky. The 
 road ran through and a little higher than 
 the encampment, which occupied both sides 
 of it. Presently the figure of a young man 
 separated itself from the rest, stept up on to 
 the smooth road, and standing in the middle 
 of it, in an absorbed attitude, began to make 
 a movement with his hands as though wind- 
 ing string round a top. That in fact was his 
 occupation, and for the next five minutes he 
 kept thus winding the cord, flinging the top 
 to the ground, and intently bending down 
 to catch it on his hand, none of the others, 
 not even the children, taking the slightest 
 notice of him, — he entirely alone there with 
 his poor little pleasure. There seemed to 
 me pathos in his loneliness. Had some one 
 spun the top with him, it would have 
 vanished; and presently, no doubt at the
 
 54 THE QUEST OF 
 
 bidding of an oath I could not hear, he 
 hurriedly thrust the top into his pocket, and 
 once more joined the straining group of 
 men. The snatched pleasure must be put 
 by at the call of reality ; the world and its 
 work must rush in upon his dream. I have 
 often thought about the top and its spinner, 
 as I have noted the absorbed faces of other 
 people's pleasures in the streets, — two 
 lovers passing along the crowded Strand 
 with eyes only for each other; a student 
 deep in his book in the corner of an omni- 
 bus; a young mother glowing over the child 
 in her arms ; the wild-eyed musician dreamily 
 treading on everybody's toes, and begging 
 nobody's pardon; the pretty little Gaiety 
 Girl hurrying to rehearsal with no thought 
 but of her own sweet self and whether there 
 will be a letter from Harry at the stage- 
 door, — yes, if we are alone in our griefs, we 
 are no less alone in our pleasures. We spin 
 our tops as in an enchanted circle, and no 
 one sees or heeds save ourselves, — as how 
 should they with their own tops to spin? 
 Happy indeed is he who has his top and 
 cares still to spin it; for to be tired of our
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 55 
 
 tops is to be tired of life, saith the 
 preacher. 
 
 As the young gipsy's little holiday came 
 to an end, I turned with a sigh upon my 
 way; and here, while still on the subject, 
 may I remark on the curious fact that prob- 
 ably Borrow has lived and died without a 
 single gipsy having heard of him, just as 
 the expertest anglers know nothing of Izaak 
 Walton. 
 
 Has the British soldier, one wonders, yet 
 discovered Rudyard Kipling, or is the 
 Wessex peasant aware of Thomas Hardy? 
 It is odd to think that the last people to 
 read such authors are the very people they 
 most concern. For you might spend your 
 life, say, in studying the London street boy, 
 and write never so movingly and humour- 
 ously about him, yet would he never know 
 your name; and though Whitechapel makes 
 novelists, it does so without knowing it, — 
 makes them to be read in Mayfair, — just as 
 it never wears the dainty hats and gowns its 
 weary little milliners and seamstresses make 
 through the day and night. It is Capital 
 and Labour over again, for in literature also
 
 56 THE QUEST OF 
 
 we reap in gladness what others have sown 
 in tears. 
 
 And now, after these admirable reflec- 
 tions, I am about to make such "art" as I 
 can of another man's tragedy, as will appear 
 in the next chapter.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL $7 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 A STRANGE WEDDING 
 
 My moralisings were cut short by my enter- 
 ing a village, and, it being about the hour 
 of noon, finding myself in the thick of a 
 village wedding. 
 
 Undoubtedly the nicest way to get married 
 is on the sly, and indeed it is at present 
 becoming quite fashionable. Many young 
 couples of my acquaintance, who have had 
 no other reason for concealing the fact 
 beyond their own whim, have thus slipped 
 off without saying a word to anybody, and 
 returned full-blown housekeepers, with "at 
 home" days of their own, and everything 
 else like real married people, — for, as said 
 an old lady to me, " one can never be sure of 
 married people nowadays unless you have 
 been at the wedding."
 
 58 THE QUKST OF 
 
 My friend George iMuncaster, who does 
 everything charmingly different from any 
 one else, hit upon one of the quaintest plans 
 for his marriage. It was simple, and some 
 may say prosaic enough. His days being 
 spent at a great office in the city, he got 
 leave of absence for a couple of hours, met 
 his wife, went with her to the registrar's, 
 returned to his office, worked the rest of the 
 day as usual, and then went to his new home 
 to find his wife and dinner awaiting him, — 
 all just as it was going to be every night 
 for so many happy years. Prosaic, you say ! 
 Not your idea of poetry, perhaps, but, after 
 a new and growing fashion in poetry, truly 
 poetic. George Muncaster's marriage is a 
 type of the new poetry, the poetry of essen- 
 tials. The old poetry, as exemplified in the 
 old-fashioned marriage, is a poetry of exter- 
 nals, and certainly it has the advantage of 
 picturesqueness. 
 
 There is perhaps more to be said for it 
 than that. Indeed, if I were ever to get 
 married, I am at a loss to know which way I 
 should choose, — George Muncaster's way or 
 the old merry fashion, with the rice and the
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 59 
 
 old shoes and the orange-blossom. No 
 doubt the old cheery publicity is a little 
 embarrassing to the two most concerned, and 
 the old marriage customs, the singing of the 
 bride and bridegroom to their nuptial couch, 
 the frank jests, the country horse-play, must 
 have fretted the souls of many a lover before 
 Shelley, who, it will be remembered, resented 
 the choral celebrations of his Scotch land- 
 lord and friends by appearing at his bedroom 
 door with a brace of pistols. 
 
 How like Shelley ! The Scotch landlord 
 meant well, we may be sure, and a very 
 small pinch of humour, or even mere ordi- 
 nary humanity, as distinct from humanita- 
 rianism, would have taken in the situation. 
 Of course Shelley's mind was full of the 
 sanctity of the moment, and indignant that 
 "the hour for which the years did sigh" 
 should thus be broken in upon by vulgar 
 revelry; but while we may sympathise with 
 his view, and admit to the full the sacred- 
 ness, not to say the solemnity, of the mar- 
 riage ceremony, yet it is to be hoped that it 
 still retains a naturally mirthful side, of 
 which such public merriment is but the
 
 6o THE QUEST OF 
 
 crude expression. With all its sweet and 
 mystical significance, surely the prevailing 
 feeling in the hearts of bride and bridegroom 
 is, or should be, that of happiness, — happi- 
 ness bubbling and dancing, all sunny ripples 
 from heart to heart. 
 
 Surely they can spare a little of it, just 
 one day's sight of it, to a less happy world, 
 — a world long since married and done for, 
 and with little happiness in it save the 
 spectacle of other people's happiness. It is 
 good for us to see happy people, good for 
 the symbols of happiness to be carried high 
 amidst us on occasion; for if they serve no 
 other purpose, they inspire in us the hope 
 that we too may some day be happy, or 
 remind our discontented hearts that we have 
 been. 
 
 If it were only for the sake of those quaint 
 old women for whom life would be entirely 
 robbed of interest were it not for other 
 people's weddings and funerals, one feels 
 the public ceremony of marriage a sort of 
 public duty, the happiness tax, so to say, 
 due to the somewhat impoverished revenues 
 of public happiness. Other forms of happi- 
 ness are taxed ; why not marriage .-'
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 6i 
 
 In a village, particularly, two people who 
 robbed the community of its perquisites in 
 this respect would be looked upon as " ene- 
 mies of the people," and their joint life 
 would begin under a social ban which it 
 would cost much subsequent hospitality to 
 remove. The dramatic instinct to which the 
 life of towns is necessarily unfavourable, is 
 kept alive in the country by the smallness of 
 the stage and the fewness of the actors. A 
 village is an organism, conscious of its 
 several parts, as a town is not. In a village 
 everybody is a public man. The great events 
 of his life are of public as well as private 
 significance, appropriately, therefore, in- 
 vested with public ceremonial. Thus used 
 to living in the public eye, the actors carry 
 off their parts at weddings and other dra- 
 matic ceremonials, with more spirit than is 
 easy to a townsman, who is naturally made 
 self-conscious by being suddenly called upon 
 to fill for a day a public position for which 
 he has had no training. That no doubt is 
 the real reason for the growth of quiet mar- 
 riages; and the desire for them, I suspect, 
 comes first from the man, for there are few
 
 62 THE QUEST OF 
 
 women who at heart do not prefer the old 
 histrionic display. 
 
 However, the village wedding at which 1 
 suddenly found myself a spectator was, for a 
 village, a singularly quiet one. There was 
 no bell-ringing, and there were no brides- 
 maids. The bride drove up quietly with 
 her father, and there was a subdued note 
 even in the murmur of recognition which 
 ran along the villagers as they stood in 
 groups near the church porch. There was 
 an absence of the usual hilarity which struck 
 me. One might almost have said that there 
 was a quite ominous silence. 
 
 Seating myself in a corner of the transept 
 where I could see all and be little seen, I 
 with the rest awaited the coming of the 
 overdue bridegroom. Meanwhile the usual 
 buzzing and bobbing of heads went on 
 amongst the usual little group near the foot 
 of the altar. Now and then one caught a 
 glisten of tears through a widow's veil, and 
 the little bride, dressed quietly in grey, 
 talked with the usual nervous gaiety to her 
 girl friends, and made the usual whispered 
 confidences about her trousseau. The father,
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 63 
 
 in occasional conversation with one and 
 another, appeared to be avoiding the subject 
 with the usual self-conscious solemnity, and 
 occasionally he looked, somewhat anxiously, 
 I thought, towards the church door. The 
 bridegroom did not keep us waiting long, — I 
 noticed that he had a rather delicate sad 
 face, — and presently the service began. 
 
 I don't know myself what getting married 
 must feel like, but it cannot be much more 
 exciting than watching other people getting 
 married. Probably the spectators are more 
 conscious of the impressive meaning of it 
 all than the brave young people them- 
 selves. I say brave, for I am always struck 
 by the courage of the two who thus gaily 
 leap into the gulf of the unknown together, 
 thus join hands over the inevitable, and put 
 their signatures to the irrevocable. Indeed, 
 I always get something like a palpitation of 
 the heart just before the priest utters those 
 final fateful words, " I declare you man and — 
 wife." Half a second before you were still 
 free, half a second aft"er you are bound for 
 the term of your natural life. Half a second 
 before you had only to dash the book from
 
 64 THE QUEST OF 
 
 the priest's hands, and put your hand over 
 his mouth, and though thus giddily swing- 
 ing on the brink of the precipice, you are 
 saved. Half a second after 
 
 Not all the king's horses and all the king's men 
 Can make you a bachelor ever again. 
 
 It is the knife-edge moment 'twixt time and 
 eternity. 
 
 And, curiously enough, while my thoughts 
 were thus running on towards the rapids of 
 that swirling moment, the very thing hap- 
 pened which I had often imagined might 
 happen to myself. Suddenly, with a sob, 
 the bridegroom covered his face with his 
 hands, and crying, "I cannot! I cannot!" 
 hurriedly left the church, tears streaming 
 down his cheeks, to the complete dismay of 
 the sad little group at the altar, and the 
 consternation of all present. 
 
 "Poor young man! I thought he would 
 never go through with it," said an old 
 woman half to herself, who was sitting near 
 me. I involuntarily looked my desire of 
 explanation. 
 
 "Well, you see," she said, "he had been
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 6$ 
 
 married before. His first wife died four 
 years ago, and he loved her beyond all 
 heaven and earth." 
 
 That evening. I afterwards heard, the 
 young bridegroom's body was found by some 
 boys as they went to bathe in the river. As 
 I recalled once more that sad yearning face, 
 and heard again that terrible " I cannot ! I 
 cannot!" I thought of Heine's son of Asra, 
 who loved the Sultan's daughter. 
 
 " What is thy name, slave ? " asked the 
 princess, "and what thy race and birth- 
 place .? " 
 
 "My name," the young slave answered, 
 " is Mahomet. I come from Yemen. My 
 race is that of Asra, and when we love, we 
 die." 
 
 And likewise a voice kept saying in my 
 heart, " If ever you find your Golden Bride, 
 be sure she will die."
 
 66 THE QUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE MYSTERIOUS PETTICOAT 
 
 The sad thoughts with which this incident 
 naturally left me were at length and sud- 
 denly dispersed, as sad thoughts not infre- 
 quently are, by a petticoat. When I say 
 petticoat, I use the word in its literal sense, 
 not colloquially as a metaphor for its usual 
 wearer, meaning thereby a dainty feminine 
 undergarment seen only by men on rainy 
 days, and one might add washing-days. It 
 was indeed to the fortunate accident of its 
 being washing-day at the pretty cottage near 
 which in the course of my morning wander- 
 ings I had set me down to rest, that I owed 
 the sight of the petticoat in question. 
 
 But first allow me to describe a little more 
 fully my surroundings at the moment. Not 
 indeed that I can hope to put into words the
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 67 
 
 charm of those embowered cottages, like 
 nests in the armpits of great trees, tucked 
 snugly in the hollows of those narrow, wind- 
 ing, almost subterranean lanes which burrow 
 their way beneath the warm-hearted Surrey 
 woodlands. 
 
 Nothing can be straighter and smoother 
 than a Surrey road — when it is on the 
 king's business; then it is a high-road and 
 behaves accordingly: but a Surrey bye-road 
 is the most whimsical companion in the 
 world. It is like a sheep-dog, always run- 
 ning backwards and forwards, poking into 
 the most out-of-the-way corners, now climb- 
 ing at a run some steep hummock of the 
 down, and now leisurely going miles about 
 to escape an ant-hill ; and all the time (here, 
 by the way, ends the sheep-dog) it is stop- 
 ping to gossip with rillets vagabond as itself, 
 or loitering to bedeck itself with flowers. It 
 seems as innocent of a destination as a boy 
 on an errand ; but, after taking at least six 
 times as long as any other road in the king- 
 dom for its amount of work, you usually find 
 it dip down of a sudden into some lovely 
 natural cul-de-sac, a meadow-bottom sur-
 
 68 THE QUEST OF 
 
 rounded by trees, with a stream spreading 
 itself in fantastic silver shallows through its 
 midst, and a cottage half hidden at the end. 
 Had the lane been going to some great 
 house, it would have made more haste, we 
 may be sure. 
 
 The lane I had been following had finally 
 dropped me down at something of a run upon 
 just such a scene. The cottage, built sub- 
 stantially of grey stone, stood upon the side 
 of the slope, and a broad strip of garden, 
 half cultivated and half wild, began near the 
 house with cabbages, and ended in a jungle 
 of giant bulrushes as it touched the stream. 
 Golden patches of ragwort blazed here and 
 there among a tangled mass of no doubt 
 worthier herbage, — such even in nature is 
 the power of gold, — and there were the 
 usual birds. 
 
 However, my business is with the week's 
 washing, which in various shades of white, 
 with occasional patches of scarlet, fluttered 
 fantastically across a space of the garden, 
 thereby giving unmistakable witness to hu- 
 man inhabitants, male and female. 
 
 As I lounged upon the green bank, I lazily
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 69 
 
 watched these parodies of humanity as they 
 were tossed hither and thither with humour- 
 ous indignity by the breeze, remarking to 
 myself on the quaint shamelessness with 
 which we thus expose to the public view 
 garments which at other times we are at such 
 bashful pains to conceal. And thus philo- 
 sophising, like a much greater philosopher, 
 upon clothes, I found myself involuntarily 
 deducing the cottage family from the family 
 washing. I soon decided that there must be 
 at least one woman say of the age of fifty, 
 one young woman, one little child, sex 
 doubtful, and one man probably young. 
 Further than this it was impossible to con- 
 jecture. Thus I made the rough guess that 
 a young man and his wife, a child, and a 
 mother-in-law were among the inhabitants 
 of this idyllic cottage. 
 
 But the clothes-line presented charming 
 evidence of still another occupant; and here, 
 though so far easy to read, came in some- 
 thing of a puzzle. Who in this humble out- 
 of-the-way cottage could afford to wear that 
 exquisite cambric petticoat edged with a fine 
 and very expensive lace ? And surely it was
 
 ^o THE QUEST OF 
 
 on no country legs that those delicately 
 clocked and open-worked silk stockings 
 walked invisible through the world. 
 
 Nor was the lace any ordinary expensive 
 English lace, such as any good shop can 
 supply. Indeed, I recognised it as being of 
 a Parisian design as yet little known in 
 England; while on the tops of the stockings 
 I laughingly suspected a border designed 
 by a certain eccentric artist, who devotes his 
 strange gifts to decorating with fascinating 
 miniatures the under-world of woman. I 
 have seen corsets thus made beautiful by 
 him valued at five hundred pounds, and he 
 never paints a pair of garters for less than a 
 hundred. His name is not yet a famous 
 one, as, for obvious reasons, his works are 
 not exhibited at public galleries, though 
 they are occasionally to be seen at private 
 views. 
 
 I am far from despising an honest red-flan- 
 nel country petticoat. There is no warmer 
 kinder-looking garment in the world. It 
 suggests country laps and country breasts, 
 with sturdy country babes greedy for the 
 warm white milk, and it seems dyed in coun-
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL ^l 
 
 try blushes. Yet, for all that, one could 
 not be insensible to the exotic race and 
 distinction of that frivolous town petticoat, 
 daintily disporting itself there among its 
 country cousins, like a queen among milk- 
 maids. 
 
 What numberless suggestions of romance 
 it awoke ! What strange perfumes seemed to 
 waft across from it, perfumes laden with 
 associations of a world so different from the 
 green world where it now was, a charming 
 world of gay intrigue and wanton pleasure. 
 No wonder the wind chose it so often for its 
 partner as it danced through the garden, 
 scorning to notice the heavy homespun 
 things about it. It was not every day that 
 that washing-day wind met so fine a lady, 
 and it was charming to see how gently he 
 played about her stockings. "Ah, wind," 
 I said, " evidently you are a gallant born ; 
 but tell us the name of the lady. It is some- 
 where on that pretty petticoat, I '11 be 
 bound." 
 
 Is she some little danseuse with the whim 
 to be romantically rustic for a week.? or is 
 she somebody else's pretty wife run away
 
 .T2 THE QUEST OF 
 
 with somebody else's man? or is she some 
 naughty little grisette with an extravagant 
 lover? or is she just the usual lady land- 
 scape artist, with a more than usual taste in 
 lingerie? 
 
 At all events, it was fairly obvious that, 
 for one reason or another, the wearer of the 
 petticoat and stockings which have now 
 occupied us for perhaps a sufficient number 
 of pages, was a visitor at the cottage. 
 
 The next thing was to get a look at her. 
 So, remembering how fond I was of milk 
 from the cow, I pushed open the gate and 
 advanced to the cottage door.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 73 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 STILL OCCUPIED WITH THE PETTICOAT 
 
 The door was opened by a comely young 
 woman, with ruddy cheeks and a bright kind 
 eye that promised convers;:.tion. But " H'm," 
 said I to myself, as she went to fetch my 
 milk, "evidently not yours, my dear." 
 
 "A nice drying day for your washing," I 
 said, as I slowly sipped my milk, with a 
 half-inclination of my head towards the 
 clothes-line. 
 
 "Very fine, indeed, sir," she returned, 
 with something of a blush, and a shy depre- 
 cating look that seemed to beg me not to 
 notice the peculiarly quaint antics which the 
 wind, evidently a humourist, chose at that 
 moment to execute with the female garments 
 upon the line. However, I was for once 
 cased in triple brass and inexorable.
 
 74 THE QUEST OF 
 
 "And who," I ventured, smiling, "may be 
 the owner of those fine things? " 
 
 "Not those," I continued, pointing to an 
 odd garment which the wind was wantonly 
 puffing out in the quaintest way, " but that 
 pretty petticoat and those silk stockings? " 
 
 The poor girl had gone scarlet, scarlet as 
 the petticoat which I was sure zvas hers, 
 with probably a fellow at the moment keep- 
 ing warm her buxom figure. 
 
 "You are very bold, sir," she stammered 
 through her blushes, but I could see that she 
 was not ill-pleased that the finery should 
 attract attention. 
 
 •'But won't you tell me?" I urged; "I 
 have a reason for asking." 
 
 And here I had better warn the reader 
 that, as the result of a whim that presently 
 seized me, I must be content to appear mad 
 in his eyes for the next few pages, till I get 
 an opportunity of explanation. 
 
 "Well, what if they should be mine?" at 
 length I persuaded her into saying. 
 
 I made the obvious gallant reply, but, " All 
 the same," I added, "you know they are not 
 yours. They belong to some lady visitor,
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 75 
 
 who, I'll be bound, isn't half so pretty; 
 now, don't they? " 
 
 "Well, they just don't then. They're 
 mine, as I tell you." 
 
 "H'm," I continued, a little nonplussed, 
 "but do you really mean there is no lady 
 staying with you.?" 
 
 "Certainly," she replied, evidently enjoy- 
 ing my bewilderment. 
 
 " Well, then, some lady must have stayed 
 here once," I retorted, with a sudden inspira- 
 tion, "and left them behind — " 
 
 "You might be a detective after stolen 
 goods," she interrupted. "I tell you the 
 things are mine; and what I should like to 
 know does a gentleman want bothering him- 
 self about a lady's petticoat! No wonder 
 you blush," for, in fact, as was easy to fore- 
 see, the situation was becoming a little 
 ridiculous for me. 
 
 "Now, look here," I said with an affecta- 
 tion of gravity, "if you'll tell me how you 
 came by those things, I '11 make it worth 
 your while. They were given to you by a 
 lady who stayed here not so long ago, now, 
 weren't they? "
 
 ^6 THE QUEST OF 
 
 "Well, then, they were." 
 
 " The lady stayed here with a gentleman ? " 
 
 "Yes, she did." 
 
 " H'm ! I thought so," I said. " Yes ! that 
 lady, it pains me to say, was my wife ! " 
 
 This unblushing statement was not, I could 
 see, without its effect upon the present owner 
 of the petticoat. 
 
 " But she said they were brother and 
 sister," she replied. 
 
 " Of course she did," I returned, with a 
 fine assumption of scorn, — "of course she 
 did. They always do." 
 
 " Dear young woman," I continued, when 
 I was able to control my emotion, " you are 
 happily remote from the sin and wickedness 
 of the town, and I am sorry to speak of 
 such things in so peaceful a spot — but as 
 a strange chance has led me here, I must 
 speak, must tell you that all wives are not 
 so virtuous and faithful as you, I am sure, are. 
 There are wives who forsake their husbands 
 and — and go off with a handsomer man, as 
 the poet says ; and mine, mine, alas ! was one 
 of them. It is now some months ago that 
 itjy wife left me in this way, and since then
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 7; 
 
 I have spent every day in searching for her; 
 but never till this moment have I come 
 upon the least trace of her. Strange, is it 
 not? that here, in this peaceful out-of-the- 
 way garden, I should come upon her very 
 petticoat, her very stockings — " 
 
 By this my grief had become such that 
 the kind girl put her hand on my arm. 
 "Don't take on so," she said kindly, and 
 then rein?mbering her treasured property, 
 and pro'iabl/ fearing a counterclaim on my 
 part to 1 s 1 ossession, " But how can you 
 be sur^ si e ^as here? There are lots of 
 petticjats ike that — " 
 
 "What was s'.ie like?" I asked through 
 my ajic-.iv'n. 
 
 " Middle height, slim and fair, with red 
 goldy hair and big blue eyes ; about thirty, I 
 should say." 
 
 " The very same," I groaned, " there is 
 no mistake ; and now," I continued, " I want 
 you to sell me that petticoat and those 
 stockings," and I took a couple of sovereigns 
 from my purse. " I want to have them to 
 confront her with, when I do find her. Per- 
 haps it will touch her heart to think of the
 
 78 THE QUEST OF 
 
 strange way in which T came by them ; and 
 you can buy just as pretty ones again with 
 the money," I added, as I noticed the dis- 
 appointment on her face at the prospect of 
 thus losing her finery. 
 
 " Well, it 's a funny business, to be sure," 
 she said, as still half reluctantly she unpegged 
 the coveted garments from the line; " but if 
 what you say 's true, I suppose you must 
 have them." 
 
 The wanton wind had been so busily kiss- 
 ing them all the morning that they were 
 quite dry, so I was able to find room for 
 them in my knapsack without danger to the 
 other contents ; and, with a hasty good-day to 
 their recent possessor, I set off at full speed 
 to find a secure nook where I could throw 
 myself down on the grass, and let loose the 
 absurd laughter that was dangerously bottled 
 up within me ; but even before I do that it 
 behoves me if possible to vindicate my sanity 
 to the reader.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 79 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 CLEARS UP MY MYSTERIOUS BEHAVIOUR 
 OF THE LAST CHAPTER 
 
 What a sane man should be doing carrying 
 about with him a woman's petticoat and silk 
 stockings, may well be a puzzle to the most 
 intelligent reader. 
 
 Whim, sir, whim ! and few human actions 
 admit of more satisfactory solution. Like 
 Shylock, I '11 say " It is my humour." But 
 no ! I '11 be more explanatory. This mad- 
 cap quest of mine, was it not understood 
 between us from the beginning to be a fan- 
 tastic whim, a poetical wild-goose chase, 
 conceived entirely as an excuse for being 
 some time in each other's company? To be 
 whimsical, therefore, in pursuit of a whim, 
 fanciful in the chase of a fancy, is surely but 
 to maintain the spirit of the game. Now, for 
 the purpose, therefore, of a romance that
 
 80 THE QUEST OF 
 
 makes no pretence to reasonableness, I had 
 very good reasons for buying that petticoat, 
 which (tlie reasons, not the petticoat) I will 
 now lay before you. 
 
 I have been conscious all the way along 
 through this pilgrimage of its inevitable 
 vagueness of direction, of my need of some- 
 thing definite, some place, some name, any- 
 thing at all, however slight, which I might 
 associate, if only for a time, with the object 
 of my quest, a definite something to seek, a 
 definite goal for my feet. 
 
 Now, when I saw that mysterious petticoat, 
 and realised that its wearer would probably 
 be pretty and young and generally charm- 
 ing, and that probably her name was some- 
 where on the waistband, the spirit of whim 
 rejoiced within me. " Why not," it said, 
 " buy the petticoat, find out the name of 
 its owner, and, instead of seeking a vague 
 Golden Girl, make up your mind doggedly 
 to find and marry her, or, failing that, carry 
 the petticoat with you, as a sort of Cinder- 
 ella's slipper, try it on any girl you happen 
 to fancy, and marry her it exactly fits? " 
 
 Now, I confess, that seemed to me quite
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 8i 
 
 a pretty idea, and I hope the reader will 
 think so too. If not, I 'm afraid I can offer 
 him no better explanation; and in fact I 
 am all impatience to open my knapsack, 
 and inform myself of the name of her to 
 the discovery of whom my wanderings are 
 henceforth to be devoted.
 
 82 THE QUEST OF 
 
 I 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THK NAME UPON THE PETTICOAT 
 
 So imagine me seated in a grassy corner, 
 with my knapsack open on the ground and 
 my petticoat and silk stockings spread out 
 in front of me, — an odd picture, to be sure, 
 for any passer by to come upon. I suppose 
 I could have passed for a pedlar, but 
 undoubtedly it would have been very embar- 
 rassing. However, as it happened, I remained 
 undisturbed, and was able to examine my 
 purch.ases at leisure. I had never seen a 
 petticoat so near before, — at all events I had 
 never given one such close attention. What 
 delicious dainty things they are ! How essen- 
 tially' womanly — as I hope no one would 
 call a pair of trousers essentially manly. 
 
 How pretty it looked spread out on the 
 grass in front of me ! How soft ! how won-
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL Ss 
 
 drously dainty the finish of every little seam ! 
 And the lace ! It almost tempts one to 
 change one's sex to wear such things. There 
 was a time indeed, and not so long ago, 
 when brave men wore garments no less 
 dainty. Rupert's Cavaliers were every bit 
 as particular about their lace collars and frills 
 as the lady whose pretty limbs once warmed 
 this cambric. 
 
 But where is the name? Ah! here it is! 
 What sweet writing ! " Sylvia Joy, No. 6." 
 
 Sylvia Joy ! What a perfectly enchanting 
 name 1 and as I repeated it enthusiastically, 
 it seemed to have a certain familiarity for 
 my ear, — as though it were the name of 
 some famous beauty or some popular 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
 
 84 THE QUEST OF 
 
 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 like- 
 wise where is Sylvia, where is she? Obvi- 
 ously they were questions not to be answered 
 off-hand. Was not my future — at all events 
 my immediate future — to be spent in an- 
 swering them? 
 
 Indeed, curiously enough, my recent haste 
 to have them answered had suddenly died 
 down. A sort of matrimonial security pos- 
 sessed 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 dis- 
 tant 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 con-
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL S5 
 
 siderable 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 bachelor- 
 hood remained. There was yet a fertile 
 strip of time wherein to sow my last handful 
 of the wild oats of youth. So festina lenie^ 
 my destined Sylvia, festina letite /
 
 86 THE QUEST OF 
 
 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 melo- 
 dramatic 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 have imagined Pan carrying the gentle- 
 man's luggage from the coach to the hotel. 
 It suffers teetotal picnic-parties to encamp 
 amid its savage hollows, and it humbly allows 
 itself to be painted by the worst artists. 
 Like a lion in a menagerie, it is a survival of 
 the extinct chaos entrapped and exhibited
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 87 
 
 amid the smug parks and well-rolled downs 
 of England. 
 
 I came upon it by a winding ledge of road, 
 which clung to the bare side of the hill like 
 the battlements of some huge castle. Some 
 two hundred feet below, a brawling upland 
 stream stood for the moat, and for the enemy 
 there was on the opposite side of the valley a 
 great green company of trees, settled like a 
 cloud slope upon slope, making all haste to 
 cross the river and ascend the heights where 
 I stood. Some intrepid larches waved green 
 pennons in the very midst of the turbulent 
 water, here and there a veteran lay with his 
 many-summered head abased in the rocky 
 course of the stream, and here was a young 
 foolhardy beech that had climbed within a 
 dozen yards of the rampart. All was wild 
 and solitary, and one might have declared it 
 a scene untrodden by the foot of man, but 
 for the telegraph posts and small piles of 
 broken " macadam " at punctual intervals, 
 and the ginger-beer bottles and paper bags 
 of local confectioners that lent an air o{ 
 civilisation to the road. 
 
 It was a place to quote Alastor in, and
 
 88 THE QUEST OF 
 
 nothing but a bad memory prevented my 
 affrighting the oaks and rills with declama- 
 tion. As it was, I could only recall the lines 
 
 "The Poet wandering on, through Arabic 
 And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste, 
 And o'er the aerial mountains which pour down 
 Indus and Oxus from their icy caves — " 
 
 and that other passage beginning 
 
 "At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore 
 He paused — " 
 
 This last I mouthed, loving the taste of its 
 thunder ; mouthed thrice, as though it were an 
 incantation, — and, indeed, from what imme- 
 diately followed, it might reasonably hav( 
 seemed so. 
 
 "At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore 
 He paused — " 
 
 I mouthed for the fourth time. And lo ! 
 advancing to me eagerly along the causeway 
 seemed the very sprite of Alastor himself! 
 There was a star upon his forehead, and 
 around his young face there glowed an 
 aureole of gold and roses — to speak figura- 
 tively, for the star upon his brow was hope,
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 89 
 
 and the gold and roses encircling his head, 
 a miniature rainbow, were youth and health. 
 His longish golden hair had no doubt its 
 share in the effect, as likewise the soft yellow 
 silk tie that fluttered like a flame in the 
 speed of his going. His blue eyes were 
 tragically fresh and clear, — as though they 
 had as yet been little used. There were little 
 wings of haste upon his feet, and he came 
 straight to me, with the air of the Angel 
 Gabriel about to make his divine announce- 
 ment. For a moment I thought that he 
 was an apparition of prophecy charged to 
 announce the maiden of the Lord for whom 
 I was seeking. However, his brief flushed 
 question was not of these things. He desired 
 first to ask the time of day, and next — here, 
 after a bump to the earth, one's thoughts 
 ballooned again heavenwards — " had I seen 
 a green copy of Shelley lying anywhere 
 along the road?" 
 
 Nothing so good had happened to me, I 
 replied — but I believed that I had seen a 
 copy of Alastor ! For a moment my mean- 
 ing was lost on him; then he flushed and 
 smiled, thanked me and was off again, say-
 
 90 TlIK OUKST OF 
 
 ing that he must find his Shelley, as he 
 would n't lose it for the world ! 
 
 He had presently disappeared as suddenly 
 as he had come, but he had left me a com- 
 panion, a radiant reverberant name; and for 
 some little space the name of Shelley clashed 
 silvery music among the hills. 
 
 Its seven letters seemed to hang right 
 across the clouds like the Seven Stars, an 
 apocalyptic constellation, a veritable sky- 
 sign ; and again the name was an angel stand- 
 ing with a silver trumpet, and again it was a 
 song. The heavens opened, and across the 
 blue rift it hung in a glory of celestial fire, 
 while from behind and above the clouds 
 came a warbling as of innumerable larks. 
 
 How strange was this miracle of fame, 
 I pondered, this strange apotheosis by 
 which a mere private name becomes a public 
 symbol ! Shelley was once a private person 
 whose name had no more universal meaning 
 than my own, and so were Byron and Crom- 
 well and Shakespeare ; yet now their names 
 are facts as stubborn as the Rocky Mountains, 
 or the National Gallery, or the circulation of 
 the blood. From their original inch or so
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 91 
 
 of private handwriting they have spread and 
 spread out across the world, and now whole 
 generations of men find intellectual accommo- 
 dation within them, — drinking fountains and 
 other public institutions are erected upon 
 them ; yea, Carlyle has become a Chelsea 
 swimming-bath, and " Highland Mary " is 
 sold for whiskey, while Mr. Gladstone is to 
 be met everywhere in the form of a bag. 
 
 Does Mr. Gladstone, I wonder, instruct his 
 valet " to pack his Gladstone " ? How strange 
 it must seem ! Try it yourself some day and 
 its effect on your servant. Ask him, for ex- 
 ample, to '' pack your " and see how 
 
 he'll stare. 
 
 Coming nearer and nearer to earth, I won- 
 dered if Colonel Boycott ever uses the word 
 " boycott," and how strange it must have 
 seemed to the late MacAdam to walk for 
 miles and miles upon his own name, like a 
 carpet spread out before him. 
 
 Then I once more rebounded heaven- 
 wards, at the vision of the eager dreamy lad 
 whose question had set going all this odd 
 clockwork of association. He would n't lose 
 his Shelley for the world ! How like twenty !
 
 92 THE QUEST OF 
 
 And how many things that he would n't lose 
 for the world will he have to give up before 
 he is thirty, I reflected sententiously, — give 
 up at last, maybe, with a stony indifference, 
 as men on a sinking ship take no thought of 
 the gold and specie in the hold. 
 
 And then, all of a sudden, a little way up 
 the ferny grassy hillside, I caught sight of 
 the end of a book half hidden among the 
 ferns. I climbed up to it. Of course it was 
 that very green Shelley which the young 
 stranger woula n't lose lor the world.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 93 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 WHY THE STRANGER WOULD NOT LOSE 
 HIS SHELLEY FOR THE WORLD 
 
 Picking up the book, I opened it involun- 
 tarily at the titlepage, and then — I re- 
 sisted a great temptation ! I shut it again. 
 A little flowery plot of girl's handwriting had 
 caught my eye, and a girl's pretty name. 
 When Love and Beauty meet, it is hard not 
 to play the eavesdropper, and it was easy to 
 guess that Love and Beauty met upon that 
 page. St. Anthony had no harder fight with 
 the ladies he was unpolite enough to call 
 demons, than I in resisting the temptation to 
 take another look at that pen-and-ink love- 
 making. Now, as I look back, I think it was 
 sheer priggishness to resist so human and 
 yet so reverent an impulse. There is noth- 
 ing sacred from reverence, and love's lovers 
 have a right to regard themselves as the
 
 94 THE QUEST OF 
 
 confidants of lovers, whenever they may 
 chance to surprise either them or their 
 letters. 
 
 While I was still hesitating, and wondering 
 how I could get the book conveyed to its 
 romantic owner, suddenly a figure turned the 
 corner of the road, and there was Alastor 
 coming back again. I slipped the book, in 
 distracted search for which he was evidently 
 still engaged, under the ferns, and, leisurely 
 lighting a pipe, prepared to tease him. He 
 was presently within hail, and, looking up, 
 caught sight of me. 
 
 " Have you found your Shelley yet ? " I 
 called down to him, as he stood a moment in 
 the road. 
 
 He shook his head. No I But he meant 
 to find it, if he had to hunt every square foot 
 of the valley inch by inch. 
 
 Would n't any other book do, I asked him. 
 Would he take a Boccaccio, or a " Golden 
 Ass," or a" Tom Jones," in exchange? — for 
 of such consisted my knapsack library. He 
 laughed a negative, and it seemed a shame to 
 tease him. 
 
 " It is not so much the book itself," he said
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 95 
 
 ** But the giver? " I suggested. 
 
 " Of course," he bhishingly replied. 
 
 " Well, suppose I have found it ? " I con- 
 tinued. 
 
 " You don't mean it — " 
 
 " But suppose I have — I 'm only suppos- 
 ing — will you give me the pleasure of your 
 company at dinner at the next inn and tell 
 me its story? " 
 
 " Indeed I will, gladly," he replied. 
 
 " Well, then," I said, " catch, for here 
 It IS ! 
 
 The joy with which he recovered it was 
 pretty to behold, and the eagerness with which 
 he ran through the leaves, to see that the vio- 
 lets and the primroses and a spray of meadow- 
 sweet, young love's bookmarkers, were all in 
 their right places, touched my heart. 
 
 He could not thank me enough ; and as we 
 stepped out to the inn, some three or four 
 miles on the road, I elicited something of 
 his story. 
 
 He was a clerk in a city office, he said, 
 but his dreams were not commercial. His 
 one dream was to be a great poet, or a great 
 writer of some sort, and this was one of his
 
 96 THE QUEST OF 
 
 holidays. As I looked at bis sensitive young 
 face, unmarred by pleasure and unscathed 
 by sorrow, bathed daily, I surmised, in the 
 may-dew of high philosophies — ah, so high! 
 washed from within by a constant radiancy 
 of pure thoughts, and from without by a 
 constant basking in the shine of every 
 beautiful and noble and tender thing, — I 
 thought it not unlikely that he might fulfil 
 his dream. 
 
 But, alas! as he talked on, with lighted 
 face and chin in the air, how cruelly I 
 realised how little I had fulfilled mine. 
 
 And how hard it was to talk to him, with- 
 out crushing some flower of his fancy or 
 casting doubt upon his dreams. Oh, the 
 gulf between twenty and thirty! I had 
 never quite comprehended it before. And 
 how inexpressibly sad it was to hear him 
 prattling on of the ideal life, of socialism, 
 of Walt Whitman and what not, — all the 
 dear old quackeries, — while I was already 
 settling down comfortably to a conserv^ative 
 middle age. He had no hope that had not 
 long been my despair, no aversion that I had 
 not accepted among the more or less com
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 97 
 
 fortable conditions of the universe. He was 
 all for nature and liberty, whereas I had 
 now come to realise the charm of the arti- 
 ficial, and the social value of constraint. 
 
 "Young man," I cried in my heart, "what 
 shall I do to inherit Eternal Youth.? " 
 
 The gulf between us was further revealed 
 when, at length coming to our inn, we sat 
 down to dinner. To me it seemed the most 
 natural thing in the world to call for the 
 wine-list and consult his choice of wine; 
 but, will you believe me, he asked to be 
 allowed to drink water! And when he 
 quoted the dear old stock nonsense out of 
 Thoreau about being able to get intoxicated 
 on a glass of water, I could have laughed 
 and cried at the same time. 
 
 " Happy Boy ! " I cried, " still able to turn 
 water into wine by the divine power of your 
 youth " ; and then, turning to the waiter, I 
 ordered a bottle of No. 37. 
 
 " Wine is the only youth granted to middle 
 age," I continued, — "in vino jitventus, one 
 might say; and may you, my dear young 
 friend, long remain so proudly independent 
 of that great Elixir — though I confess that 
 
 7
 
 98 THE QUEST OF 
 
 I have met no few young men under thirty 
 who have been excellent critics of the wine- 
 list." 
 
 As the water warmed him, he began to 
 expand into further confidence, and then he 
 told me the story of his Shelley, if a story it 
 can be called. For, of course, it was simple 
 enough, and the reader has long since guessed 
 that the reason why he would n't lose his 
 Shelley for the world was the usual simple 
 reason. 
 
 I listened to his rhapsodies of Her and 
 Her and Her with an aching heart. How 
 good it was to be young ! No wonder men 
 had so desperately sought the secret of 
 Eternal Youth ! Who would not be young 
 for ever, for such dreams and such an 
 appetite? 
 
 Here of course was the very heaven-sent 
 confidant for such an enterprise as mine. 
 I told him all about my whim, just for the 
 pleasure of watching his face light up with 
 youth's generous worship of all such fan- 
 tastic nonsense. You should have seen his 
 enthusiasm and heard all the things he said. 
 Why, to encounter such a whimsical fellow
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 99 
 
 as myself in this unimaginative age was like 
 meeting a fairy prince, or coming unex- 
 pectedly upon Don Quixote attacking the 
 windmill. I offered him the post of Sancho 
 Panza; and indeed what would he not give, 
 he said, to leave all and follow me! But 
 then I reminded him that he had already 
 found his Golden Girl. 
 
 "Of course, I forgot," he said, with I'm 
 afraid something of a sigh. For you see 
 he was barely twenty, and to have met 
 your ideal so early in life is apt to rob 
 the remainder of the journey of something 
 of its zest. 
 
 I asked him to give me his idea of what 
 the Blessed Maid should be, to which he 
 replied, with a smile, that he could not do 
 better than describe Her, which he did for 
 the sixth time. It was, as I had foreseen, 
 the picture of a Saint, a Goddess, a Dream, 
 very lovely and pure and touching; but it 
 was not a woman, and it was a woman I was 
 in search of, with all her imperfections on 
 her head. I suppose no boy of twenty 
 really loves a zvoman, but loves only his 
 ethereal ised extract of woman, entirely free
 
 loo THE QUEST OF 
 
 from earthy adulteration. I noticed the 
 words "pure" and "natural " in constant use 
 by my young friend. Some lines went 
 through my head, but I forbore to quote 
 them : — 
 
 Alas ! your so called purity 
 
 Is merely immaturity, 
 
 And woman's nature plays its part 
 
 Sincerely but in woman's art. 
 
 But I couldn't resist asking him, out of 
 sheer waggery, whether he did n't think a 
 touch of powder, and even, very judiciously 
 applied, a touch of rouge, was an improve- 
 ment to woman. His answer went to my 
 heart. 
 
 " Paint — a woman ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 It was as though you had said — paint an 
 angel ! 
 
 I could bear no more of it. The gulf 
 yawned shiveringly wide at remarks like 
 that; so, with the privilege of an elder, I 
 declared it time for bed, and yawned off to 
 my room. 
 
 Next morning we bade good-bye, and went 
 our several ways. As we parted, he handed 
 me a letter which I was not to open till I
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL loi 
 
 was well on my journey. We waved good-bye 
 to each other till the turnings of the road 
 made parting final, and then, sitting down 
 by the roadside, I opened the letter. It 
 proved to be not a letter, but a poem, which 
 he had evidently written after I had left 
 him for bed. It was entitled, with twenty's 
 love for a tag of Latin, Ad Piiellam Aureanty 
 and it ran thus : — 
 
 The Golden Girl in every place 
 
 Hides and reveals her lovely face ; 
 
 Her neither skill nor strength may find -^ 
 
 'T is only loving moves her mind. 
 
 If but a pretty tace you seek, 
 
 You '11 find one any day or week ; 
 
 But if you look v?ith deeper eyes, 
 
 And seek her lovely, pure, and wise, 
 
 Then must you wear the pilgrim's shoon 
 
 For many a weary, wandering moon. 
 
 Only the pure in heart may see 
 That lily of all purity, 
 Only in clean unsullied thought 
 The image of her face is caught. 
 And only he her love may hold 
 Who buys her with the spirit's gold. 
 
 Thus only shall you find your pearl, 
 O seeker of the Golden Girl 1 
 She trod but now the grassy way, 
 A vision of eternal May.
 
 I02 THE QUEST OF 
 
 The devil take his impudence! "Only 
 the pure in heart," "clean, unsullied 
 thought." How like the cheek of twenty! 
 And all the same how true ! Dear lad, how 
 true! Certainly, the child is father to the 
 man. Dirige nos ! O sage of the Golden 
 Twenties ! 
 
 As I meditatively folded up the pretty bit 
 of writing, I made a resolution; but it was 
 one of such importance that not only is 
 another chapter needed to do it honour, but 
 it may well inaugurate another book of this 
 strange uneventful history.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 103 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 IN WHICH I DECIDE TO BE YOUNG AGAIN 
 
 Yes, I said to myself, the lad is quite right ; 
 I will follow his advice. I 'm afraid I was 
 in danger of developing into a sad cynic, 
 with a taste for the humour of this world. 
 What should have been a lofty high-souled 
 pilgrimage, only less transcendental than 
 that of the Holy Grail itself, has so far 
 failed, no doubt, because I have undertaken 
 it too much in the wanton spirit of a 
 troubadour. 
 
 I will grow young and serious again. 
 Yes, why not } I will take a vow of Youth. 
 One's age is entirely a matter of the imagi- 
 nation. From this moment I am no longer 
 thirty. Thirty falls from me like a hideous 
 dream. My back straightens again at the
 
 I04 THE QUEST OF 
 
 thought; my silvering hair blackens once 
 more; my eyes, a few moments ago lack- 
 lustre and sunken, grow bright and full 
 again, and the whites are clear as the finest 
 porcelain. Veni, veni, Mephistophile 1 your 
 Faust is young again, — young, young, and, 
 with a boy's heart, open once more to all 
 the influences of the mighty world. 
 
 I bring down my stick upon the ground 
 with a mighty ring of resolution, and the 
 miracle is done. Who would take me for 
 thirty now.-* From this moment I abjure 
 pessimism and cynicism in all their forms, 
 put from my mind all considerations of the 
 complexities of human life, unravel all by a 
 triumphant optimism which no statistics can 
 abash or criticism dishearten. I likewise 
 undertake to divest myself entirely of any 
 sense of humour that may have developed 
 within me during the baneful experiences 
 of the last ten years, and, in short, will 
 consent for the future to be nothing that is 
 not perfectly perfect and pure. These, I 
 take it, are the fundamental conditions of 
 being young again. 
 
 And as for the Ouest, it shall forthwith
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 105 
 
 be undertaken in an entirely serious and 
 high-minded spirit. From this moment I 
 am on the look-out for a really transcendental 
 attachment. No "bright-eyed bar-maids," 
 however "refined," need apply. Ladies who 
 are prodigal of their white petticoats are no 
 longer fit company for me. Indeed I shall 
 no longer look upon a petticoat, unless I am 
 able first entirely to spiritualise it. It must 
 first be disinfected of every earthly thought. 
 
 Yes, I am once more a young man, sound 
 in wind and limb, with not a tooth or an 
 illusion lost, my mind tabula rasa, my heart 
 to be had for the asking. Oh, come, ye 
 merry, merry maidens ! The fairy prince is 
 on the fairy road. 
 
 Incipit vita nuova / 
 
 So in the lovely rapture of a new-born 
 resolution — and is there any rapture like it? 
 — nature has no more intoxicating illusion 
 than that of turning over a new leaf, or be- 
 ginning a new life from to-day — I sprang 
 along the road with a carolling heart ; quite 
 forgetting that Apuleius and Fielding and 
 Boccaccio were still in my knapsack — not 
 to speak of the petticoat.
 
 106 THE QUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER n 
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE SINGING STREAM 
 
 Apuleius and Fielding and Boccaccio, bad 
 companions for a petticoat, I 'm afraid, bad 
 companions too for so young a man as I had 
 now become. However, as I say, I had for 
 the time forgotten that pagan company, or, 
 in my puritanic zeal, I might have thrown 
 them all to be washed clean in the upland 
 stream, whose pure waters one might fancy 
 were fragrant from their sunny day among 
 the ferns and the heather, fragrant to the 
 eye, indeed, if one may so speak, with the 
 shaken meal of the meadowsweet. This 
 stream had been the good angel of my 
 thoughts all the day, keeping them ever mov- 
 ing and ever fresh, cleansing and burnishing 
 them, quite an open-air laundry of the mind. 
 We were both making for the same little 
 town, it appeared, and as the sun was set- 
 ting we reached it together. I entered the
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 107 
 
 town over the bridge, and the stream under 
 it, washing the walls of the high-piled, 
 many-gabled old inn where I proposed to 
 pass the night. I should hear it still rip- 
 pling on with its gentle harpsichord tinkle, 
 as I stretched myself down among the cool 
 lavendered sheets, and little by little let slip 
 the multifarious world. 
 
 The inn windows beamed cheerily, a home 
 of ruddy rest. Having ordered my dinner 
 and found my room, I threw down my knap- 
 sack and then came out again to smoke an 
 ante-prandial pipe, listen to the evensong of 
 the stream, and think great thoughts. The 
 stream was still there, and singing the same 
 sweet old song. You could hear it long 
 after it was out of sight, in the gathering 
 darkness, like an old nurse humming lulla- 
 bies in the twilight. 
 
 The dinner was good, the wine was old, 
 and oh! the rest was sweet! Nothing fills 
 one with so exquisite a weariness as a day 
 spent in good resolutions and great thoughts. 
 There is something perilously sensuous in 
 the relaxation of one's muscles, both of mind 
 and body, after a day thus well spent.
 
 io8 THE QUEST OF 
 
 Lighting up my pipe once more, and draw- 
 ing to tiie fire, I suddenly realised a sense 
 of loneliness. Of course, I was lonely for a 
 book, — Apuleius or Fielding or Boccaccio! 
 
 An hour ago they had seemed dangerous 
 companions for so lofty a mood; but now, 
 under the gentle influences of dinner, the 
 mood had not indeed changed — but mel- 
 lowed. So to say, we would split the dif- 
 ference between the ideal and the human, 
 and be, say, twenty-five. 
 
 It was in this genial attitude of mind that 
 I strode up the quaint circular staircase to 
 fetch Fielding from my room, and, shade of 
 Tom Jones ! what should be leaving my 
 room, as I advanced to enter it, but — well, 
 it 's no use, resolutions are all very well, 
 but facts are facts, especially when they 're 
 natural, and here was I face to face with the 
 most natural little natural fact, and withal 
 the most charming and merry-eyed, that — 
 well, in short, as I came to enter my room 
 I was confronted by the roundest, ruddiest 
 little chambermaid ever created for the trial 
 of mortal frailty. 
 
 And the worst of it was that her merry eye
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 109 
 
 was in partnership with a merry tongue. 
 Indeed, for some unexplained reason, she 
 was bubbling over with congested laughter, 
 the reason for which mere embarrassment 
 set one inquiring. At last, between little 
 gushes of laughter which shook her plump 
 shoulders in a way that aroused wistful 
 memories of Hebe, she archly asked me, 
 with mock solemnity, if I should need a 
 lady's maid. 
 
 "Certainly," I replied with inane prompti- 
 tude, for I had no notion of her drift; but 
 then she ran off in a scurry of laughter, and 
 still puzzled I turned into my room, to find, 
 neatly hung over the end of the bed, nothing 
 less than the dainty petticoat and silk stock- 
 ings of Sylvia Joy. 
 
 You can imagine the colour of my cheeks 
 at the discovery. No doubt I was already 
 the laughing-stock of the whole inn. What 
 folly! What a young vixen! Oh, what's 
 to be done.? Pay my bill and sneak off at 
 once to the next town ; but how pass through 
 the grinning line of boots, and waiter, and 
 chambermaid, and ironically respectful land- 
 lord and landlady, in the hall . . .
 
 no THE QUEST OF 
 
 But while I thus deliberated, something 
 soft pressed in at ^he door; and, making a 
 sudden dart, I had the little baggage who 
 had brought about my dilemma a prisoner 
 in my arms. 
 
 I stayed some days at this charming old 
 inn, for Amaryllis — oh, yes, you may be 
 sure her name was Amaryllis — had not 
 betrayed me; and indeed she may have some 
 share in my retrospect of the inn as one of 
 the most delightful which I encountered 
 anywhere in my journeying. Would you 
 like to know its name .-• Well, I know it as 
 The Singing Stream. If you can find it 
 under that name, you are welcome. And 
 should you chance to be put into bedroom 
 No. 26, you can think of me, and how I 
 used to lie awake, listening to the stream 
 rippling beneath the window, with its gentle 
 harpsichord tinkle, and little by little let- 
 ting slip the multifarious world. 
 
 And if anything about this chapter should 
 seem to contradict the high ideals of the 
 chapter preceding it, I can only say that, 
 though the episode should not rigidly fulfil 
 the conditions of the transcendental, noth-
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL in : 
 
 i 
 ing could have been more characteristic of ! 
 
 that early youth to which I had vowed my- 
 self. Indeed, I congratulated myself, as I 
 looked my last at the sign of The Singing ] 
 
 Stream, that this had been auite in my early 
 manner. i
 
 112 THE UUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 IN WHICH I SAVE A USEFUL LIFE 
 
 Though I had said good-bye to the inn, the 
 stream and I did not part company at the 
 inn-door, but continued for the best part of 
 a morning to be fellow-travellers. Indeed, 
 having led me to one pleasant adventure, its 
 purpose, I afterwards realised, was to lead 
 me to another, and then to go about its own 
 bright business. I don't think either of us 
 had much idea where we were or whither we 
 were bound. Our guiding principle seemed 
 to be to get as much sunshine as possible, 
 and to find the easiest road. We avoided 
 dull sandy levels and hard rocky places, with 
 the same instinctive dexterity. We gloomed 
 together through dark dingles, and came out 
 on sunny reaches with the same gilded mag- 
 nificence. There are days when every stream 
 is Pactolus and every man is Croesus, and
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 113 
 
 thanks to that first and greatest of all alche- 
 mists, the sun, the morning I write of was 
 a morning when to breathe was gold and to 
 see was silver. And to breathe and see was 
 all one asked. It was the first of May, and 
 the world shone like a great illuminated 
 letter with which that father of artists, the 
 sun, was making splendid his missal of the 
 seasons. 
 
 The month of May was ever his tour de 
 force. Each year he has strained and stimu- 
 lated his art to surpass himself, seeking ever 
 a finer and a brighter gold, a more celestial 
 azure. Never had his gold been so golden, 
 his azure so dazzlingly clear and deep as 
 on this particular May morning; while his 
 fancy simply ran riot in the marginal dec- 
 orations of woodland and spinney, quaint 
 embroidered flowers and copses full of ex- 
 quisitely painted and wonderfully trained 
 birds of song. It was indeed a day for na- 
 ture to be proud of. So seductive was the 
 sunshine that even the shy trout leapt at 
 noonday, eager apparently to change his sil- 
 ver for gold. 
 
 8
 
 114 THE QUEST OF 
 
 O silver fish in the silver stream, 
 O golden fish in the golden gleam, 
 Tell me, tell me, tc!l me true. 
 Shall I find my girl if I follow you ? 
 
 I suppose the reader never makes non- 
 sense rhymes from sheer gladness of h^art, 
 — nursery doggerel to keep time with the 
 rippling of the stream, or the dancing of the 
 sun, or the beating of his heart; the gib- 
 berish of delight. As I hummed this non- 
 sense, a trout at least three pounds in 
 weight, whom you would know again any- 
 where, leapt a yard out of the water, and I 
 took it, in my absurd, sun-soaked heart, as a 
 good omen, as though he had said, " Follow 
 and see." 
 
 I had no will but to follow, no desire but 
 to see. All the same, though I affected to 
 take him seriously, I had little suspicion 
 how much that trout was to mean to me, — 
 yes, within the course of a very few moments. 
 Indeed, I had hardly strolled on for another 
 quarter of a mile, when I was suddenly 
 aroused from wool-gathering by his loud 
 cries for help. Looking up, I saw him 
 flashing desperately in mid-air, a lovely foot
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 115 
 
 of writhing silver. In another second he 
 was swung through the sunlight, and laid 
 out breathing hard in a death-bed of butter- 
 cups and daisies. There was not a moment 
 to be lost, if I were to repay the debt of 
 gratitude which in a flash I had seen that I 
 owed him. 
 
 "Madam," I said, breathlessly springing 
 forward, as a heavenly being was coldly 
 tearing the hook from the gills of the 
 unlucky trout, "though I am a stranger, 
 will you do me a great favour.^ It is a 
 matter of life or death ..." 
 
 She looked up at me with some surprise, 
 but with a fine fearless glance, and almost im- 
 mediately said, "Certainly, what can I do?" 
 
 " Spare the life of that trout — " 
 
 "It is a singular request," she replied, 
 "and one," she smiled, "self-sacrificing in- 
 deed for an angler to grant, for he weighs 
 at least three pounds. However, since he 
 seems a friend of yours, here goes — " And 
 with the gladdest, most grateful sound in 
 the world, the happy smack of a fish back 
 home again in the water, after an appalling 
 three minutes spent on land, that prophetic
 
 Ti6 THE QUEST OF 
 
 trout was once more an active unit in God's 
 populous universe. 
 
 "Now that's good of you," I said, with 
 thankful eyes, "and shows a kind heart." 
 
 "And kind hearts, they say, are more than 
 coronets," she replied merrily, indulging in 
 that derisive quotation which seems to be 
 the final reward of the greatest poets. 
 
 For a moment there was a silence, during 
 which I confess to wondering what I should 
 say next. However, she supplied my place. 
 
 "But of course," she said, "you owe it to 
 me, after this touching display of humani- 
 tarianism, to entertain me with your reason 
 for interposing between me and my just 
 trout. Was it one of those wonderful talk- 
 ing fishes out of the Arabian Nights, or are 
 you merely an angler yourself, and did you 
 begrudge such a record catch to a girl .'' " 
 
 "I see," I replied, "that you will under- 
 stand me. That trout ivas, so to speak, out 
 of the Arabian Nights. Only five minutes 
 ago it was a May-day madness of mine to 
 think that he leaped out of the water and 
 gave me a highly important message. So I 
 begged his life from a mere fancy. It was
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 117 
 
 just a whim, which I trust you will 
 
 excuse. " 
 
 " A whim ! So you are a follower of the 
 great god Whim," she replied, with some- 
 what of an eager interest in her voice. " How 
 nice it is to meet a fellow-worshipper!" 
 
 " Do women ever have whims } " I respect- 
 fully asked. 
 
 "I don't know about other women," she 
 replied. "Indeed, I 'm afraid I 'm unnatural 
 enough to take no interest in them at all. 
 But, as for me, — well, what nonsense ! Tell 
 me some more about the trout. What was 
 the wonderful message he seemed to give 
 you.^ Or perhaps I oughtn't to ask.^" 
 
 "I'm afraid," I said, "it would hardly 
 translate into anything approaching com- 
 
 mon-sense." 
 
 " Did I ask for common-sense ? " she 
 retorted. It was true, she had n't. But 
 Uhen I could n't, with any respect for her, tell 
 her the trout's message, or, with any respect 
 for myself, recall those atrocious doggerel 
 lines. In my dilemma, I caught sight of a 
 pretty book lying near her fishing-basket, 
 and diverted the talk by venturing to ask 
 its name.
 
 ti8 THE QUEST OF 
 
 '"T is of Aucassin and Nicoletc," she 
 replied, with something in her voice which 
 seemed to imply that the tender old story 
 would be familiar to me. My memory 
 served me for once gallantly. I answered 
 by humming half to myself the lines from 
 the prologue, — 
 
 " Sweet the song, the story sweet, 
 There is no man hearkens it, 
 No man living 'neath the sun, 
 So outwearied, so foredone, 
 Sick and woful, worn and sad. 
 But is healed, but is glad 
 'T is so sweet." 
 
 " How charming of you to know it ! " she 
 laughed. " You are the only man in this 
 county, or the next, or the next, who knows 
 it, I 'm sure." 
 
 "Are the women of the county more 
 familiar with it.^*" I replied. 
 
 "But tell me about the trout," she once 
 more persisted. 
 
 At the same moment, however, there came 
 from a little distance the musical tinkle of a 
 bell that sounded like silver, a fairy-like 
 and almost startling sound.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 119 
 
 " It is my lunch," she explained. " I 'm a 
 worshipper of the great god Whim too, and 
 close by here I have a little summer-house, 
 full of books and fishing-lines and other 
 childishness, where, when my whim is to be 
 lonely, I come and play at solitude. If 
 you '11 be content with rustic fare, and 
 promise to be amusing, it would be very 
 pleasant if you'd join me." 
 
 O ! most prophetic and agreeable trout ! 
 Was it not like the old fairy tales, the 3^ou- 
 help-us and we'11-help-you of Psyche and 
 the ants.-* 
 
 It had been the idlest whim for me to 
 save the life of that poor trout. There was 
 no real pity in it. For two pins, I had been 
 just as ready to cut it open, to see if by 
 chance it carried in its belly the golden ring 
 wherewith I was to wed the Golden — 
 
 However, such is the gratitude of nature 
 to man, that this little thoughtless act of 
 kindness had brought me face to face with 
 — was it the Golden Girl.^
 
 I20 THE gUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 'tis of nicolete and her bower in 
 the wildwood 
 
 But I have all this time left the reader 
 without any formal descriptive introduction 
 to this whimsical young lady angler. Not 
 without reason, for, like any really charming 
 personality, she was very difficult to pic- 
 ture. Paint a woman ! as our young friend 
 Alastor said. 
 
 Faces that fall into types you can describe, 
 or at all events label in such a way that the 
 reader can identify them; but those faces 
 that consist mainly of spiritual effect and 
 physical bloom, that change with everything 
 they look upon, the light in which ebbs and 
 flows with every changing tide of the soul, 
 — these you have to love to know, and to 
 worship to portray. 
 
 Now the face of Nicolete, as I learnt in 
 time to call her, was just soul and bloom,
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 121 
 
 perhaps mainly bloom. I never noticed 
 whether she had any other features except 
 her eyes, I suppose she had a nose; a little 
 lace pocket-handkerchief I have by me at the 
 moment is almost too small to be evidence 
 on that important point. 
 
 As I walked by her side that May morn- 
 ing, I was only conscious of her voice and 
 her exquisite girlhood ; for though she talked 
 with the aplomb of a woman of the world, a 
 passionate candour and simple ardour in her 
 manner would have betrayed her, had her 
 face not plainly declared her the incarnation 
 of twenty. But if she were twenty years 
 young, she was equally twenty years old ; 
 and twenty years old, in some respects, is 
 the greatest age attained to by man or 
 woman. In this she rather differed from 
 Alastor, of whom otherwise she was the 
 female counterpart. Her talk, and some- 
 thing rather in her voice than her talk, soon 
 revealed her as a curious mixture of youth 
 and age, of dreamer and dhilhision^e. One 
 soon realised that she was too young, was 
 hoping too much from life, to spend one's 
 days with. Yet she had just sufficiently
 
 122 THE QUEST OF 
 
 that touch of languor which puts one at 
 one's ease, though indeed it was rather the 
 languor of waiting for what was going to 
 happen than the weariness of experience 
 gone by. She was weary, not because of the 
 past, but because the fairy theatre of life 
 still kept its curtain down, and forced her to 
 play over and over again the impatient over- 
 ture of her dreams. 
 
 I have no doubt that it was largely ner- 
 vousness that kept the mysterious playwright 
 so long fumbling behind the scenes, for it 
 was obvious that it would be no ordinary 
 sort of play, no every-day domestic drama, 
 that would satisfy this young lady, to whom 
 life had given, by way of prologue, the in- 
 estimable blessing of wealth, and the privi- 
 lege, as a matter of course, of choosing as she 
 would among the grooms (that is, the bride- 
 grooms) of the romantic British aristocracy. 
 
 She had made youth's common mistake of 
 beginning life with books, which can only 
 be used without danger by those who are in 
 a position to test their statements. Youth 
 naturally believes everything that is told it, 
 especially in books.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 123 
 
 Now, books are simply professional liars 
 about life, and the books that are best worth 
 reading are those which lie the most beauti- 
 fully. Yet, in fairness, we must add that 
 they are liars, not with intent to mislead, 
 but merely with the tenderest purpose to 
 console. They are the good Samaritans 
 that find us robbed of all our dreams by the 
 roadside of life, bleeding and weeping and 
 desolate; and such is their skill and wealth 
 and goodness of heart, that they not only 
 heal up our wounds, but restore to us the 
 lost property of our dreams, on one con- 
 dition, — that we never travel with them 
 again in the daylight. 
 
 A library is a better world, built by the 
 brains and hearts of poets and dreamers, as 
 a refuge from the real world outside ; and in 
 it alone is to be found the land of milk and 
 honey which it promises. 
 
 "Milk and honey" would have been an 
 appropriate inscription for the delicious 
 little library which parents who, I surmised, 
 doted on Nicolete in vain, had allowed her 
 to build in a wild woodland corner of her 
 ancestral park, half a mile away from the
 
 124 THE QUEST OF 
 
 great house, where, for all its corridors and 
 galleries, she could never feel, at all events, 
 spiritually alone. All that was most sugared 
 and musical and generally delusive in the 
 old library of her fathers had been brought 
 out to this little woodland library, and to 
 that nucleus of old leather-bound poets and 
 romancers, long since dead, yet as alive and 
 singing on their shelves as any bird on the 
 sunny boughs outside, my young lady's 
 private purse had added all that was most 
 sugared and musical and generally delusive 
 in the vellum-bound Japanese-paper litera- 
 ture of our own luxurious day. Nor were 
 poets and romancers from over sea — in their 
 seeming simple paper covers, but with, oh, 
 such complicated and subtle insides! — ab- 
 sent from the court which Nicolete held here 
 in the greenwood. Never was such a nest of 
 singing-birds. All day long, to the ear of 
 the spirit, there was in this little library a 
 sound of harping and singing and the telling 
 of tales, — songs and talcs of a world that 
 never was, yet shall ever be. Here day by 
 day Nicolete fed her young soul on the 
 nightingale's-tongues of literature, and put
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 125 
 
 down her book only to listen to the nightin- 
 gale' s-tongues outside. Yea, sun, moon, 
 and stars were all in the conspiracy to lie to 
 her of the loveliness of the world and the 
 good intentions of life. And now, thus 
 unexpectedly, I found myself joining the 
 nefarious conspiracy. Ah, well ! was I not 
 twenty myself, and full of dreams!
 
 126 THE QUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 tlS OF AUCASSIN AND NICOLETE 
 
 Thus it was that we lunched together amid 
 the books and birds, in an exquisite solitude 
 d deiix; for the ringer of the silver bell had 
 disappeared, having left a dainty meal in 
 readiness — for two. 
 
 "You see you were expected," said 
 Nicolete, with her pretty laugh. " I dreamed 
 I should have a visitor to-day, and told 
 Susan to lay the lunch for two. You 
 mustn't be surprised at that," she added 
 mischievously; "it has often happened be- 
 fore. I dream that dream every other night, 
 and Susan lays for two every day. She knows 
 my whims, — knows that the extra knife 
 and fork are for the fairy knight that may 
 turn up any afternoon, as I tell her — " 
 
 "To find the sleepless princess," I added, 
 thinking at the same time one of those irrel-
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 127 
 
 evant asides that will go through the brain 
 of thirty, that the woman who would get 
 her share of kisses nowadays must neither 
 slumber nor sleep. 
 
 A certain great poet, I think it was Byron, 
 objected to seeing women in the act of eat- 
 ing. He thought their eating should be 
 done in private. What a curiously perverse 
 opinion! For surely woman never shows to 
 better advantage than in the dainty exercises 
 of a dainty repast, and there is nothing more 
 thrilling to man than a meal alone with a 
 woman he loves or is about to love. Per- 
 haps, deep down, the reason is that there 
 still vibrates in the masculine blood the 
 thrilling surprise of the moment when man 
 first realised that the angel woman was built 
 upon the same carnivorous principles as his 
 grosser self. 
 
 That is one of the first heart-beating sur- 
 prises that come upon the boy Columbus, as 
 he sets out to discover the New World of 
 woman; and indeed his surprise has not 
 seldom deepened into admiration, as he ha? 
 found that not only does woman eat, but 
 frequently eats a lot
 
 128 THE QUEST OF 
 
 This privilege of seeing woman eat is the 
 earliest granted of those delicate animal 
 intimacies, the fuller and fuller confiding of 
 which plays not the least important part, 
 and ever such a sweet one, even in a highly 
 transcendental affection. It is this gradual 
 humanising of the divine female that brings 
 about the spiritualising of the unregenerate 
 male. 
 
 In the earliest stages of love the services 
 are small that we are privileged to do for 
 the loved one. But if we are allowed to sit 
 at meat with her, — ever a royal condescen- 
 sion, — it is ours at least to pass her the 
 salt, to see that she is never kept waiting a 
 moment for the mustard or the pepper, to cut 
 the bread for her with geometrical precision, 
 and to lean as near her warm shoulder as we 
 dare to pour out for her the sacred wine. 
 
 Yes ! for sure I was twenty again, for the 
 performance of these simple serA'ices for 
 Nicolete gave me a thrill of pure boyish 
 pleasure such as I had never expected to feel 
 again. And did she not make a knight of 
 me by gently asking if I would be so kind 
 as to carve the chicken, and how she laughed
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 129 
 
 quite disproportionally at my school- boy 
 story of the man who, being asked to carve a 
 pigeon, said he thought they had better send 
 for a wood-carver, as it seemed to be a wood 
 pigeon. 
 
 And while we ate and drank and laughed 
 and chatted, the books around us were weav- 
 ing their spells. Even before the inventii«i 
 of printing books were "love's purveyors." 
 Was it not a book that sent Paolo and 
 Francesca for ever wandering on that stormy 
 wind of passion and of death .^ And nowa- 
 days the part played by books in human 
 drama is greater than we perhaps realise. 
 Apart from their serious influence as deter- 
 mining destinies of the character, what end- 
 less opportunities they afford to lovers, who 
 perhaps are denied all other meeting-places 
 than may be found on the tell-tale pages of 
 a marked volume. The method is so easy 
 and so unsuspect. You have only to put 
 faint pencil-marks against the tenderest 
 passages in your favourite new poet, and 
 lend the volume to Her, and She has only to 
 leave here and there the dropped violet of a 
 timid confirmatory initial, for you to know 
 
 9
 
 130 THE QUEST OF 
 
 your fate. And what a touchstone books 
 thus become! Indeed they simplify love- 
 making, from every point of view. With 
 books so inexpensive and accessible to all as 
 they are to-day, no one need run any risks 
 of marrying the wrong woman. He has 
 only to put her through an unconscious 
 examination by getting her to read and mark 
 a few of his favourite authors, and he is thus 
 in possession of the master clues of her 
 character. With a list of her month's read- 
 ing and a photograph, a man ought to be 
 able to make up his mind about any given 
 woman, even though he has never spoken to 
 her. " Name your favourite writer " should 
 be one of the first questions in the Engage- 
 ment Catechism. 
 
 There is, indeed, no such short cut to 
 knowledge of each other as a talk about 
 books. One short afternoon is enough for 
 any two book-lovers, though they may have 
 met for the first time in the morning, to 
 make up their minds whether or not they have 
 been born for each other. If you are agreed, 
 say, in admiring Meredith, Hardy, Omar 
 Khayyam, and Maeterlinck, — to take four
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 131 
 
 particularly test-authors, — there is nothing 
 to prevent your marrying at once. Indeed, 
 a love for any one of these significant writers 
 will be enough, not to speak of an admira- 
 tion for "Aucassin and Nicolete. " 
 
 Now, Nicolete and I soon found that we 
 had all these and many another writer in 
 common, and before our lunch was ended 
 we were nearer to each other than many old 
 friends. The heart does not more love the 
 heart that loves it than the brain loves the 
 brain that comprehends it ; and, whatever 
 else was to befall us, Nicolete and I were 
 already in love with each other's brains. 
 Whether or not the malady would spread till 
 it reached the heart is the secret of some 
 future chapter.
 
 132 THE QUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 A FAIRY TALE AND ITS FAIRY TAILORS 
 
 As this is not a realistic novel, I do not hold 
 myself bound, as I have said before, to 
 account reasonably for everything that is 
 done — least of all, said — within its pages. 
 I simply say, So it happened, or So it is, 
 and expect the reader to take my word. If 
 he be uncivil enough to doubt it, we may as 
 well stop playing this game of fancy. It is 
 one of the first conditions of enjoying a book, 
 as it is of all successful hypnotism, that the 
 reader surrenders up his will to the writer, 
 who, of course, guarantees to return it to 
 him at the close of the volume. If you say 
 that no young lady would have behaved as I 
 have presently to relate of Nicolete, that no 
 parents were ever so accommodating in the 
 world of reality, I reply, — No doubt you are 
 right, but none the less what I have to tell 
 is true and really did happen, for all that.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 133 
 
 And not only did it happen, but to the 
 whimsically minded, to the true children of 
 fancy, it will seem the most natural thing in 
 the world. No doubt they will wonder why 
 I have made such a preamble about it, as 
 irudeed, now I think of it, so do I. 
 
 Again I claim exemption in this wander- 
 ing history from all such descriptive drudgery 
 upon second, third, and fourth dramatis per- 
 soncB as your thorough-going novelist must 
 undertake with a good grace. Like a host and 
 hostess at a reception, the poor novelist has 
 to pretend to be interested in everybody, — 
 in the dull as in the brilliant, in the bore as 
 in the beauty. I 'm afraid I should never do 
 as a novelist, for I should waste all my time 
 with the heroine; whereas the true novelist 
 is expected to pay as much attention to the 
 heroine's parents as though he were a suitor 
 for her hand. Indeed, there is no relative of 
 hero or heroine too humble or stupid for such 
 a novelist as the great Balzac. He will in- 
 vite the dullest of them to stay with him for 
 quite prolonged visits, and without a mur- 
 mur set apart a suite of chapters for their 
 accommodation. I 'm not sure that the
 
 134 THE QUEST OF 
 
 humanity of the reader in these cases is of 
 such comprehensive sympathy as the novel- 
 ist's, and it may well be that the novelist 
 undertakes all such hard labour under a mis- 
 apprehension ot the desires of the reader, 
 who, as a rule, I fancy, is as anxious to join 
 the ladies as the novelist himself. Indeed, 
 I believe that there is an opportunity for a 
 new form of novel, in which the novelist, as 
 well as the reader, will skip all the dull 
 people, and merely indicate such of them as 
 are necessary to the action by an outline 
 or a symbol, compressing their familiar 
 psychology, and necessary plot-interferences 
 with the main characters, into recognised 
 formulae. For the benefit of readers vora- 
 cious for everything about everybody, sched- 
 ule chapters might be provided by inferior 
 novelists, good at painting say tiresome 
 bourgeois fathers, gouty uncles and brothers 
 in the army, as sometimes in great pictures 
 we read that the sheep in the foreground 
 have been painted by Mr, So-and-so, R.A. 
 
 The Major-General and his Lady were 
 taking the waters at Wiesbaden. That was 
 all I knew of Nicolete's parents, and all I
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 135 
 
 needed to know; with the exception of one 
 good action, — ^at her urgent entreaty they 
 had left Nicolete behind them, with no other 
 safeguard than a charming young lady com- 
 panion, whose fitness for her sacred duties 
 consisted in a temperament hardly less ro- 
 mantic and whimsical than Nicolete's own. 
 She was too charming to deserve the name 
 of obstacle ; and as there was no other — 
 
 But I admit that the cart has got a little 
 in front of the horse, and I grow suddenly 
 alarmed lest the reader should be suspect- 
 ing me of an elopement, or some such 
 romantic vulgarity. If he will only put any 
 such thoughts from his mind, I promise to 
 proceed with the story in a brief and business- 
 like manner forthwith. 
 
 We are back once more at the close of the 
 last chapter, in Nicolete's book-bower in 
 the wildwood. It is an hour or two later, 
 and the afternoon sun is flooding with a 
 searching glory all the secret places of the 
 woodland. Hidden nooks and corners, un- 
 used to observation, suddenly gleam and 
 blush in effulgent exposure, — like lovers 
 whom the unexpected turning on of a light
 
 136 THE QUEST OF 
 
 has revealed kissing in the dark, — and are 
 as suddenly, unlike the lovers, left in their 
 native shade again. It was that rich after- 
 noon sunlight that loves to flash into teacups 
 as though they v^cre crocuses, that loves to 
 run a golden finger along the beautiful 
 wrinkles of old faces and light up the noble 
 hollows of age-worn eyes; the sunlight that 
 loves to fall with transfiguring beam on the 
 once dear book we never read, or, with ma- 
 licious inquisitivcness, expose to undreamed- 
 of detection the undusted picture, or the gold- 
 dusted legs of remote chairs, which the poor 
 housemaid has forgotten. 
 
 So in Nicolete's bower it illuminated with 
 strange radiancy the dainty disorder of 
 deserted lunch, made prisms out of the 
 wine-glasses, painted the white cloth with 
 wedge-shaped rainbows, and flooded the cav- 
 ernous interiors of the half-eaten fowl with 
 a pathetic yellow torchlight. 
 
 Leaving that melancholy relic of carnivo- 
 rous appetite, it turned its bold gold gaze 
 on Nicolete. No need to transfigure her! 
 But, heavens! how grandly her young face 
 took the great kiss of the god I Then it fell
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 137 
 
 for a tender moment on the jaundiced page 
 of my old Boccaccio, — a rare edition, which 
 I had taken from my knapsack to indulge 
 myself with the appreciation of a connois- 
 seur. Next minute " the unobstructed beam " 
 was shining right into the knapsack itself, 
 for all the world like one of those little 
 demon electric lights with which the dentist 
 makes a momentary treasure-cave of your dis- 
 tended jaws, flashing with startled stalactite. 
 At the same moment Nicolete's starry eyes 
 took the same direction ; then there broke 
 from her her lovely laughter, merry and 
 inextinguishable. 
 
 Once more, need I say, my petticoat had 
 played me false — or should I not say true? 
 For there was its luxurious lace border, a 
 thing for the soft light of the boudoir, or the 
 secret moonlight of love's permitted eyes, 
 alone to see, shamelessly brazening it out in 
 this terrible sunlight. Obviously there was 
 but one way out of the dilemma, to confess 
 my pilgrimage to Nicolete, and reveal to 
 her all the fanciful absurdity to which, after 
 all, I owed the sight of her. 
 
 " So that is why you pleaded so hard for
 
 138 THE QUEST OF 
 
 that poor trout," she said, when I had fin- 
 ished. " Well, you are a fairy prince indeed ! 
 Now, do you know what the punishment of 
 your nonsense is to be?" 
 
 "Is it very severe and humiliating?" I 
 asked. 
 
 " You must judge of that. It is — to take 
 me with you ! " 
 
 " You, — what do you mean ? " 
 
 " Yes, — not for good and all, of course, 
 but just for, say, a fortnight, just a fortnight 
 of rambles and adventures, and then to de- 
 liver me safe home again where you found 
 me — " 
 
 "But it is impossible," I almost gasped 
 in surprise. " Of course you are not 
 serious ? " 
 
 " I am, really, and you will take me, 
 won't you?" she continued pleadingly. 
 "You don't know how we women envy you 
 men those wonderful walking-tours we can 
 only read about in Hazlitt or Stevenson. 
 We are not allowed to move without a nurse 
 or a footman. From the day we are born 
 to the day we die, we are never left a 
 moment to ourselves. But you — you can
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 139 
 
 go out into the world, the mysterious world, 
 do as you will, go where you will, wander 
 here, wander there, follow any bye-way that 
 takes your fancy, put up at old inns, make 
 strange acquaintances, have all kinds of 
 romantic experiences — Oh, to be a man 
 for a fortnight, your younger brother for a 
 fortnight!" 
 
 " It is impossible ! " I repeated. 
 
 "It isn't at all," she persisted, with a fine 
 blush. " If you will only be nice and kind, 
 and help me to some Rosalind's clothes. 
 You have only to write to your tailors, or 
 send home for a spare suit of clothes, — with 
 a little managing yours would just fit me, 
 you're not so much taller, — and then we 
 could start, like two comrades, seeking 
 adventures. Oh, how glorious it would 
 be!" 
 
 It was in vain that I brought the batteries 
 of common-sense to bear upon her whim. I 
 raised every possible objection in vain. 
 
 I pointed out the practical difficulties. 
 There were her parents. Were n't they 
 drinking the waters at Wiesbaden, and 
 weren't they to go on drinking them for
 
 I40 THE QUEST OF 
 
 another three weeks? My fancy made a 
 picture of them distended with three weeks' 
 absorption of mineral springs. Then there 
 was her companion. Nicolete was confident 
 of her assistance. Then I tried vilifying 
 myself. How could she run the risk of 
 trusting herself to such intimate companion- 
 ship with a man whom she had n't known 
 half a dozen hours .'' This she laughed to 
 scorn. Presently I was silent from sheer 
 lack of further objections; and need I say 
 that all the while there had been a traitor 
 impulse in my heart, a weak sweetness urg- 
 ing me on to accept the pretty chance which 
 the good genius of my pilgrimage had so evi- 
 dently put in my way, — for, after all, what 
 harm could it do? With me Nicolete was, 
 indeed, safe, — that, of course, I knew, — 
 and safely she should come back home again 
 after her little frolic. All that was true 
 enough. And how charming it would be to 
 have such a dainty companion ! then the 
 fun, the fancy, the whim of it all. What 
 was the use of setting out to seek adventures 
 if I did n't pursue them when found. 
 
 Well, the long and short of it was that I
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 141 
 
 agreed to undertake the adventure, provided 
 that Nicolete could win over the lady whom 
 at the beginning of the chapter I declared 
 too charming to be described as an obstacle. 
 By nine o'clock the following morning the 
 fairy tailors, as Nicolete called them, were 
 at work on the fairy clothes, and, at the end 
 of three days, there came by parcel-post 
 a bulky unromantic-looking brown-paper 
 parcel, which it was my business to convey 
 to Nicolete under cover of the dark.
 
 142 THE QUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 FROM THE MORNING STAR TO THE MOON 
 
 I QUITE realise that this book is written 
 perhaps only just in time for the motive of 
 these two or three chapters to be appreciated 
 in its ancient piquancy. Very soon, alas! 
 the sexes will be robbed of one of the first 
 and most thrilling motives of romance, the 
 motive of As You Like It, the romance of 
 wearing each other's clothes. Alas, that 
 every advance of reason should mean a corre- 
 sponding retreat of romance! It is only 
 reasonable that woman, being — have you 
 yet realised the fact.** — a biped like her 
 brothers, should, when she takes to her 
 brothers' recreations, dress as those recrea- 
 tions demand ; and yet the death of Rosalind 
 is a heavy price to pay for the lady bicyclist. 
 So soon as the two sexes wear the same 
 clothes, they may as well wear nothing; the
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 143 
 
 game of sex is up. In this matter, as in 
 others, we cannot both have our cake and 
 eat it. All romance, like all temptation, is 
 founded on the Fascination of the Excep- 
 tion. So soon as the exception becomes, 
 instead of merely proving, the rule, that 
 particular avenue of romance is closed. The 
 New Woman of the future will be the woman 
 with the petticoats, she who shall restore 
 the ancient Eleusinian mysteries of the silk 
 skirt and the tea-gown. 
 
 Happily for me, my acquaintance among 
 the Rosalinds of the bicycle, at this period of 
 my life, was but slight, and thus no familiar- 
 ity with the tweed knickerbocker feminine 
 took off the edge of my delight on first 
 beholding Nicolete clothed in like manhood 
 with ourselves, and yet, delicious paradox! 
 looking more like a woman than ever. 
 
 During those three days while the fairy 
 tailors were at work our friendship had not 
 been idle. Indeed, some part of each day 
 we had spent diligently learning each other, 
 as travellers to distant lands across the 
 Channel work hard at phrase-book and 
 Baedeker the week before their departure.
 
 144 THE QUEST OF 
 
 Meanwhile too T had made the acquaintance 
 of the charming lady Obstacle, — as it proved 
 so unfair to call her, — and by some process of 
 natural magnetism we had immediately won 
 each other's hearts, so that on the moonlight 
 night on which I took the river path with 
 my brown-paper parcel there was no misgiv- 
 ing in my heart, — nothing but harping and 
 singing, and blessings on the river that 
 seemed all silver with the backs of magic 
 trout. As I thought of all I owed that 
 noble fish, I kneeled by the river's bearded 
 lip, among the nettles and the meadow- 
 sweet, and swore by the inconstant moon 
 that trout and I were henceforth kinsmen, 
 and that between our houses should be an 
 eternal amity. The chub and the dace and 
 the carp, not to speak of that Chinese pirate 
 the pike, might still look to it, when I came 
 forth armed with rod and line; but for me 
 and my house the trout is henceforth sacred. 
 By the memory of the Blessed Saint Izaak, 
 I swore it ! 
 
 My arrival at Beaucaire was one of great 
 excitement. Nicolete and the Obstacle were 
 both awaiting me, for the mysteries of mas-
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 145 
 
 culine attire were not to be explored alone. 
 The parcel was snatched quite unceremoni- 
 ously from my hands, the door shut upon 
 me, and I laughingly bidden go listen to 
 the nightingale. I was not long in finding 
 one, nor, being an industrious phrase-maker, 
 did I waste my time, for, before I was sum- 
 moned to behold Nicolete in all her boyhood, 
 I had found occasion and moonlight to 
 remark to my pocket-book that. Though all 
 the world has heard the song of the Nightin- 
 gale to the Rose, only the Nightingale has 
 heard the answer of the Rose. This I hur- 
 riedly hid in my heart for future conversa- 
 tion, as the pre-arranged tinkle of the silver 
 bell called me to the rose. 
 
 Would, indeed, that I were a nightingale 
 to sing aright the beauty of that rose with 
 which, think of it, I was to spend a whole 
 fortnight, — yes, no less than fourteen won- 
 derful days. 
 
 The two girls were evidently proud of 
 themselves at having succeeded so well with 
 the mysterious garments. There were one 
 or two points on which they needed my 
 guidance, but they were unimportant; and 
 
 10
 
 146 THE QUEST OF 
 
 when at last Nicolete would consent to stand 
 up straight and let me have a good look at 
 her, — for, poor child! she was as shy and 
 shrinking as though she had nothing on, — 
 she made a very pretty young man indeed. 
 
 She didn't, I 'm afraid, look like a young 
 man of our degenerate day. She was far too 
 beautiful and distinguished for that. Be- 
 sides, her dark curling hair, quite short for 
 a woman, was too long, and her eyes — 
 like the eyes of all poets — were women's 
 eyes. She looked, indeed, like one of those 
 wonderful boys of the Italian Renaissance, 
 whom you may still see at the National Gal- 
 lery, whose beauty is no denial, but rather 
 the stamp of their slender, supple strength, 
 young painters and sculptors who held the 
 palette for Leonardo, or wielded the chisel 
 for Michelangelo, and anon threw both aside 
 to take up sword for Guelf or Ghibelline 
 in the narrow streets of Florence. 
 
 Her knapsack was already packed, and its 
 contents included a serge skirt " in case of 
 emergencies." Already, she naughtily re- 
 minded me, we possessed a petticoat between 
 u§.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 147 
 
 The brief remainder of the evening passed 
 in excited chatter and cigarettes, and in my 
 instructing Nicolete in certain tricks of 
 masculine deportment. The chief difficulty 
 I hardly like mentioning; and if the Obstacle 
 had not been present, I certainly dare not 
 have spoken of it to Nicolete. I mean that 
 she was so shy about her pretty legs. She 
 could n't cross them with any successful 
 nonchalance. 
 
 " You must take your legs more for 
 granted, dear Nicolete," I summoned cour- 
 age to say. " The nonchalance of the legs 
 is the first lesson to be learnt in such a 
 masquerade as this. You must regard them 
 as so much bone and iron, rude skeleton 
 joints and shins, as though they were the 
 bones of the great elk or other extinct South 
 Kensington specimen," — "not," I added in 
 my heart, "as the velvet and ivory which 
 they are." 
 
 We had agreed to start with the sun on 
 the morrow, so as to get clear of possible 
 Peeping Toms; and when good-nights had 
 been said, and I was once more swinging 
 towards my inn, it seemed but an hour oj"
 
 148 THE QUEST OF 
 
 two, as indeed it was, before I heard four 
 o'clock drowsily announced through my 
 bedroom door, and before I was once more 
 striding along that river-bank all dew- 
 silvered with last night's moonlight, the 
 sun rubbing his great eye on the horizon, 
 the whole world yawning through dainty 
 bed-clothes of mist, and here and there a 
 copse-full of birds congratulating themselves 
 on their early rising. 
 
 Nicolete was not quite ready, so I had to go 
 listen to the lark, about whom, alas! I could 
 find nothing to say to my pocket-book, before 
 Nicolete, armed cap-d-pie with stick and 
 knapsack, appeared at the door of her chilet. 
 
 The Obstacle was there to see us start. 
 She and Nicolete exchanged many kisses 
 which were hard to bear, and the first quarter 
 of an hour of our journey was much obstructed 
 by the farewells of her far-fluttering hand- 
 kerchief. When at last we were really 
 alone, I turned and looked at Nicolete strid- 
 ing manfully at my side, just to make sure 
 that it was really true. 
 
 "Well, we're in for it now," I said; 
 "aren't you frightened.^"
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 149 
 
 "Oh, it 's wonderful," she replied; "don't 
 spoil it by talking." 
 
 And I did n't; for who could hope to com- 
 pete with the sun, who was making the whole 
 dewy world shake with laughter at his bril- 
 liancy, or with the birds, any one of whom 
 was a poet at least equal to Herrick? 
 
 Presently we found ourselves at four cross- 
 roads, with a four-fingered post in the centre. 
 'We had agreed to leave our destination to 
 chance. We read the sign-post. 
 
 " Which shall we choose? " I said, — 
 
 "Aucassin, true love and fair, 
 To what land do we repair ? " 
 
 "Don't you think this one," she replied, 
 "this one ? — To the Moon ! " 
 
 "Certainly, we couldn't find a prettier 
 place; but it 's a long way," I replied, look- 
 ing up at the sky, all roses and pearls, — "a 
 long way from the Morning Star to the 
 Moon." 
 
 " All the longer to be f ree, " cried Nicolete, 
 recklessly. 
 
 " So be it," I assented. " Aliens — to the 
 Moon ! "
 
 ISO THE QUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER Vni 
 
 THE KIND OF THING THAT HAPPENS IN 
 THE MOON 
 
 Two friends of my youth, with whom it 
 would be hopeless to attempt competition, 
 have described the star-strewn journey to 
 the moon. It is not for me to essay again 
 where the ingenious M. Jules Verne and 
 Mr. William Morris have preceded me. 
 Besides, the journey is nowadays much more 
 usual, and therefore much less adventurous, 
 than when those revered writers first de- 
 scribed it. In the middle ages a journey to 
 the moon with a woman you loved was a 
 very perilous matter indeed. Even in the 
 last century the roads were much beset with 
 danger; but in our own day, like most jour- 
 neys, it is accomplished with ease and safety 
 in a few hours. 
 
 However, to the latter-day hero, whose 
 appetite for dragons is not keen, this absence
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 151 
 
 of adventure is perhaps rather pleasurable 
 than otherwise; and I confess that I enjoyed 
 the days I spent on foot with Nicolete none 
 the less because they passed in tranquil 
 uneventfulness, — that is, without events of 
 the violent kind. Of course, all depends on 
 what you cal 1 an event. We were not way- 
 laid by robbers, we fed and slept unchal- 
 lenged at inns, we escaped collision with 
 the police, and we encountered no bodily 
 dangers of any kind; yet should I not call 
 the journey uneventful, nor indeed, I think, 
 would Nicolete. 
 
 To me it was one prolonged divine event, 
 and, with such daily intercourse with Nico- 
 lete, I never dreamed of craving for any 
 other excitement. To walk from morning 
 to evening by her side, to minister to her 
 moods, to provide such entertainment as I 
 might for her brain, and watch like a father 
 over her physical needs; to note when she 
 was weary and too proud to show it, and to 
 pretend to be done up myself; to choose for 
 her the easiest path, and keep my eyes open 
 for wayside flowers and every country sur- 
 prise, — these, and a hundred other atten-
 
 152 THE QUEST OF 
 
 tions, kept my heart and mind in busy 
 service. 
 
 To picnic by some lonely stream-side on 
 a few sandwiches, a flask of claret, and a 
 pennyworth of apples ; to talk about the 
 books we loved; to exchange our hopes and 
 dreams, — we asked nothing better than this 
 simple fare. 
 
 And so a week went by. But, though so 
 little had seemed to happen, and though our 
 walking record was shamefully modest, yet, 
 imperceptible as the transition had been, we 
 were, quite insensibly indeed, and unac- 
 knowledged, in a very different relation to 
 each other than when we had started out 
 from the Morning Star. In fact, to make no 
 more words about it, I was head over heels 
 in love with Nicolete, and I think, without 
 conceit, I may say that Nicolete was rapidly 
 growing rather fond of me. Apart from 
 anything else, we were such excellent chums. 
 We got along together as if indeed we had 
 been two brothers, equable in our tempers 
 and one in our desires. 
 
 At last the feeling on my side became so 
 importunate that I could no longer keep 
 silence.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 153 
 
 We were seated together taking tea at a 
 small lonely inn, whose windows looked out 
 over a romantic little lake, backed by Sal- 
 vator Rosa pine-woods. The sun was begin- 
 ning to grow dreamy, and the whole world to 
 wear a dangerously sentimental expression. 
 
 I forget exactly what it was, but some- 
 thing in our talk had set us glowing, had 
 touched tender chords of unexpected sym- 
 pathy, and involuntarily I stretched out my 
 hand across the corner of the table and pressed 
 Nicolete's hand as it rested on the cloth. She 
 did not withdraw it, and our eyes met with a 
 steady gaze of love. 
 
 "Nicolete," I said presently, when I could 
 speak, •' it is time for you to be going back 
 home." 
 
 "Why.?" she asked breathlessly. 
 
 "Because," I answered, "I must love you 
 if you stay." 
 
 " Would you then bid me go ? " she said. 
 
 "Nicolete," I said, "don't tempt me. Be 
 a good girl and go home. " 
 
 "But supposing I don't want to go home," 
 she said; "supposing — oh, supposing I love 
 you too.? Would you still bid me go? "
 
 154 THE QUEST OF 
 
 "Yes," I said. "In that case it would be 
 even more imperative." 
 
 " Aucassin!" 
 
 "It is true, it is true, dear Nicolete." 
 
 "Then, Aucassin," she replied, almost 
 sternly, in her great girlish love, "this is 
 true also, — I love you. I have never loved, 
 shall never love, any man but you ! " 
 
 "Nicolete!" 
 
 "Aucassin!" 
 
 There were no more words spoken between 
 us for a full hour that afternoon.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 155 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 WRITTEN BY MOONLIGHT 
 
 I KNEW deep down in my heart that it 
 could n't last, yet how deny myself these 
 roses, while the opportunity of gathering 
 them was mine! — the more so, as I believed 
 it would do no harm to Nicolete. At all 
 events, a day or two more or less of moon- 
 shine would make no matter either way. 
 And so all next day we walked hand in 
 hand through Paradise, 
 
 It has been said by them of old time, and 
 our fathers have told us, that the kiss of first 
 love, the first kiss of the first woman we 
 love, is beyond all kisses sweet ; and true it 
 is. But true is it also that no less sweet is 
 the first kiss of the last woman we love. 
 
 Putting my faith in old saws, as a young 
 man will, I had never dreamed to know 
 again a bliss so divinely passionate and pure
 
 156 THE QUEST OF 
 
 as came to me with every glance of Nicolete's 
 sweet eyes, with every simple pressure of 
 her hand; and the joy that was mine when 
 sometimes, stopping on our way, we would 
 press together our lips ever so gravely and 
 tenderly, seems too holy even to speak of. 
 
 The holy angels could not have loved 
 Nicolete with a purer love, a love freer from 
 taint of any earthly thought, than I, a man 
 of thirty, blas^, and fed from my youth upon 
 the honeycomb of woman. 
 
 It was curious that the first difficulty of 
 our pilgrimage should befall us the very 
 next day. Coming towards nightfall to a 
 small inn in a lonely unpopulated country- 
 side, we found that the only accommodation 
 the inn afforded was one double-bedded 
 room, and there was no other inn for at 
 least ten miles. I think I was more troubled 
 than Nicolete. When, after interviewing 
 the landlady, I came and told her of the 
 dilemma, where she sat in the little par- 
 lour wearied out with the day's walk, she 
 blushed, it is true, but seemed little put 
 about. Indeed, she laughed, and said it was 
 rather fun, "like something out of Sterne,"
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 157 
 
 — of such comfort is a literary reference in 
 all seasons and circumstances, — and then 
 she added, with a sweet look that sent the 
 blood rioting about my heart, "It won't 
 matter so much, will it, love, now ? " 
 
 There proved nothing for it but to accept 
 the situation, and we made the arrange- 
 ment that Nicolete was to slip off to bed 
 first, and then put out the light and go to 
 sleep. However, when I followed her, hav- 
 ing sat up as long as the landlady's patience 
 would endure, I found that, though she had 
 blown out the candle, she had forgotten to 
 put out the moon, which shone as though 
 it were St. Agnes' Eve across half the 
 room. 
 
 I stole in very shyly, kept my eyes sternly 
 from Nicolete' s white bed, though, as I 
 could n't shut my ears, the sound of her 
 breathing came to me with indescribable 
 sweetness. After I had lain among the 
 sheets some five or ten minutes, I was sud- 
 denly startled by a little voice within the 
 room saying, — 
 
 " I 'm not asleep." 
 
 "Well, you should be, naughty child.
 
 158 THE QUEST OF 
 
 Now shut your eyes and go to sleep, — and 
 fair dreams and sweet repose," I replied. 
 
 "Won't you give me one little good-night 
 kiss?" 
 
 "I gave you one downstairs." 
 
 " Is it very wicked to want another.? " 
 
 There was not a foot between our two 
 beds, so I bent over and took her soft 
 white shoulders in my arms and kissed her. 
 All the heaped-up sweetness of the whitest, 
 freshest flowers of the spring seemed in my 
 embrace as I kissed her, so soft, so fragrant, 
 so pure; and as the moonlight was the white 
 fire in our blood. Softly I released her, 
 stroked her brown hair, and turned again to 
 my pillow. Presently the little voice was 
 in the room again, — 
 
 "Mayn't I hold 3^our hand? Somehow I 
 feel lonely and frightened." 
 
 So our hands made a bridge across which 
 our dreams might pass through the night, 
 and after a little while I knew that she 
 slept. 
 
 As I lay thus holding her hand, and listen- 
 ing to her quiet breathing, I realised once 
 more what my young Alastor had meant by
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 159 
 
 the purity of high passion. For indeed the 
 moonlight that fell across her bosom was 
 not whiter than my thoughts, nor could any 
 kiss — were it even such a kiss as Venus 
 promised to the betrayer of Psyche — even 
 in its fiercest delirium, be other than dross 
 compared with the wild white peace of those 
 silent hours when we lay thus married and 
 maiden side by side.
 
 i6o THE QUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 HOW ONE MAKES LOVE AT THIRTY 
 
 My sleeplessness while Nicolete slept had 
 not been all ecstasy, for I had come to a 
 bitter resolution; and next morning, when 
 we were once more on our way, I took a 
 favourable opportunity of conveying it to 
 Nicolete. 
 
 "Nicolete," I said, as we rested awhile 
 by the roadside, " I have something serious 
 to say to you." 
 
 "Yes, dear," she said, looking rather 
 frightened. 
 
 "Well, dear, it is this, — our love must 
 end with our holiday. No good can come 
 of it." 
 
 " But oh, why ? I love you. " 
 
 " Yes, and I love you, — love you as I never 
 thought I could love again. Yet I know it 
 is all a dangerous dream, — a trick of our 
 brains, an illusion of our tastes."
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL i6i 
 
 " But oh, why ? I love you. " 
 
 "Yes, you do to-day, I know; but it 
 could n't last. I believe I could love you 
 for ever; but even so, it would n't be right. 
 You could n't go on loving me. I am too old, 
 too tired, too dcsillitsioue, perhaps too selfish." 
 
 " I will love you always ! " said girl 
 Nicolete. 
 
 "Whereas you," I continued, disregarding 
 the lovely refrain of her tear-choked voice, 
 "are standing on the wonderful threshold of 
 life, waiting in dreamland for the dawn. 
 And it will come, and with it the fairy 
 prince, with whom you shall wander hand 
 in hand through all its fairy rose-gardens; 
 but I, dear Nicolete, — I am not he. " 
 
 Nicolete did not speak. 
 
 "I know," I continued, pressing her hand, 
 "that I may seem young enough to talk like 
 this, but some of us get through life quicker 
 than others, and when we say, ' It is done, ' 
 it is no use for onlookers to say, ' Why, it is 
 just beginning!' Believe me, Nicolete, I 
 am not fit husband for you." 
 
 " Then shall I take no other," said Nicolete, 
 with set face.
 
 i62 THE QUEST OF 
 
 "Oh, yes, you will," I rejoined; "let but 
 a month or two pass, and you will see how 
 wise I was, after all. Besides, there are 
 other reasons, of which there is no need to 
 speak — " 
 
 " What reasons ? " 
 
 "Well," I said, half laughing, "there is 
 the danger that, after all, we might n't 
 agree. There is nothing so perilously diffi- 
 cult as the daily intercourse of two people 
 who love each other. You are too young to 
 realise its danger. And I could n't bear to 
 see our love worn away by the daily dropping 
 of tears, not to speak of its being rent by 
 the dynamite of daily quarrels. We know 
 each other's tastes, but we know hardly any- 
 thing of each other's natures." 
 
 Nicoletc looked at me strangely. 'Troth, 
 it was a strange way to make love, I knew. 
 
 "And what else?" she asked somewhat 
 coldly. 
 
 "Well, then, though it's not a thing one 
 cares to speak of, I 'm a poor man — " 
 
 Nicolete broke through my sentence with 
 a scornful exclamation. 
 
 "You," I continued straight on, — "well.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 163 
 
 you have been accustomed to a certain 
 spaciousness and luxury of life. This it 
 would be out of my power to continue for 
 you. These are real reasons, very real rea- 
 sons, dear Nicolete, though you may not 
 think so now. The law of the world in 
 these matters is very right. For the rich 
 and the poor to marry is to risk, terribly 
 risk, the very thing they would marry for 
 — their love. Love is better an unmarried 
 than a married regret. " 
 
 Nicolete was silent again. 
 
 "Think of your little woodland chAlet, 
 and your great old trees in the park, — you 
 could n't live without them. I have, at 
 most, but one tree worth speaking of to 
 offer you — " 
 
 I purposely waived the glamour which my 
 old garden had for my mind, and which I 
 wouldn't have exchanged for fifty parks. 
 
 "Trees!" retorted Nicolete, — "what are 
 trees ? " 
 
 "Ah, my dear girl, they are a good deal, — 
 particularly when they are genealogical, as 
 my one tree is not." 
 
 "Aucassin," she said suddenly, almost
 
 i64 THE QUEST OF 
 
 fiercely, "can you really jest? Tell me 
 this, — do you love me?" 
 
 "I love you," I said simply; "and it is 
 just because I love you so much that I have 
 talked as I have done. No man situated 
 as I am who loved you could have talked 
 otherwise." 
 
 "Well, I have heard it all, weighed it 
 all," said Nicolete, presently; "and to me it 
 is but as thistledown against the love within 
 my heart. Will you cast away a woman 
 who loves you for theories.-' You know you 
 love me, know I love you. We should have 
 our trials, our ups and downs, I know; but 
 surely it is by those that true love learns how 
 to grow more true and strong. Oh, I cannot 
 argue! Tell me again, do you love me.-* " 
 
 And there she broke down and fell sob- 
 bing into my arms. I consoled her as best 
 I might, and presently she looked up at me 
 through her tears. 
 
 "Tell me again," she said, "that you love 
 me, just as you did yesterday, and promise 
 never to speak of all those cruel things 
 again. Ah! have you thought of the kind 
 of men you would give me up to?"
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 165 
 
 At that I confess I shuddered, and I gave 
 her the required assurance. 
 
 "And you won't be wise and reasonable 
 and ridiculous any more ? " 
 
 "No," I answered; adding in my mind, 
 "not, at all events, for the present."
 
 i66 THE OUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 HOW ONE PLAYS THE HERO AT THIRTY 
 
 Had we only been able to see a day into the 
 future, we might have spared ourselves this 
 agonising, for all our doubts and fears were 
 suddenly dispersed in an entirely unexpected 
 manner. Happily these interior problems 
 are not infrequently resolved by quite exterior 
 forces. 
 
 We were sitting the following afternoon 
 in one of those broad bay windows such 
 as one finds still in some old country inns, 
 just thinking about starting once more on 
 our way, when suddenly Nicolete, who had 
 been gazing out idly into the road, gave a 
 little cry. I followed her glance. A car- 
 riage with arms on its panels had stopped at 
 the inn, and as a smart footman opened the 
 door, a fine grey-headed military-looking 
 man stepped out and strode hurriedly up the 
 inn steps.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 167 
 
 "Aucassin," gasped Nicolete, "it is my 
 father!" 
 
 It was too true. The old man's keen eye 
 had caught sight of Nicolete at the window 
 also, and in another moment we were all 
 three face to face. I must do the Major- 
 General the justice of saying that he made 
 as little of a "scene" of it as possible. 
 
 "Now, my girl, " he said, "I have come 
 to put an end to this nonsense. Have you 
 a petticoat with you.-* Well, go upstairs and 
 get it on. I will wait for you here . . . 
 On you, sir, I shall waste no words. From 
 what I have heard, you are as moonstruck 
 as my daughter." 
 
 "Of course," I stammered, "I cannot 
 expect you to understand the situation, 
 though I think, if you would allow me, I 
 could in a very few words make it some- 
 what clearer, — make you realise that, after 
 all, it has been a very innocent and childish 
 escapade, in which there has been no harm 
 and a great deal of pleasure — " 
 
 But the Major-General cut me short. 
 
 " I should prefer," he said, "not to discuss 
 the matter. I may say that I realise that
 
 i68 THE QUEST OF 
 
 my daughter has been safe in your hands, 
 however foolish," — for this T thanked him 
 with a bow, — " but I must add that your 
 eccentric acquaintance must end here — " 
 
 I said him neither yea nor nay; and while 
 we stood in armed and embarrassed silence, 
 Nicolcte appeared with white face at the 
 door, clothed in her emergency petticoat. 
 Alas! it was for no such emergency as this 
 that it had been destined that merry night 
 when she had packed it in her knapsack. 
 With a stern bow her father turned from me 
 to join her; but she suddenly slipped past 
 him, threw her arms round me, and kissed 
 me one long passionate kiss. 
 
 "Aucassin, be true," she cried, "I will 
 never forget you, — no one shall come be- 
 tween us;" and then bursting into tears, she 
 buried her face in her hands and followed 
 her father from the room. 
 
 In another mom.ent she had been driven 
 away, and I sat as one stupefied in the inn 
 window. But a few short minutes ago she 
 had been sitting merrily prattling by my 
 side, and now I was once more as lonely as 
 if we had never met. Presently I became
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 169 
 
 conscious in my reverie of a little crumpled 
 piece of paper on the floor. I picked it up. 
 It was a little note pencilled in her bedroom 
 at the last moment. -"Aucassin," it ran, 
 just like her last passionate words, " be true. 
 I will never forget you. Stay here till I 
 write to you, and oh, write to me soon ! — 
 Your broken-hearted Nicolete. " 
 
 As I read, I saw her lovely young face, 
 radiant with love and sorrow as I had last 
 seen it, and pressing the precious little 
 letter to my lips, I said (erv^iutly, "Yes, 
 Nicolete, I will be true."
 
 I70 THE QUEST OF 
 
 CPIAPTER XII 
 
 IX WHICH I REVIEW MY ACTIONS AND 
 RENEW MY RESOLUTIONS 
 
 No doubt the youthful reader will have but 
 a poor opinion of me after the last two 
 chapters. He will think that in the scene 
 with the Major-General I acted with lament- 
 ably little spirit, and that generally my 
 friend Alastor would have proved infinitely 
 more worthy of the situation. It is quite 
 true, I confess it. The whole episode was 
 made for Alastor. Nicolete and he were 
 born for each other. Alas ! it is one of the 
 many drawbacks of experience that it fre- 
 quently prevents our behaving with spirit. 
 
 I must be content to appeal to the wiser 
 and therefore sadder reader, of whom I have 
 but a poor opinion if he too fails to under- 
 stand me. He, I think, will understand 
 why I didn't promptly assault the Major- 
 General, seize Nicolete by the waist, thrust
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 171 
 
 her into her ancestral carriage, haul the 
 coachman from his box, and, seizing the 
 reins, drive away in triumph before aston- 
 ishment had time to change into pursuit. 
 Truly it had been but the work of a moment, 
 and there was only one consideration which 
 prevented my following this now-I-call-that- 
 heroic course. It is a consideration I dare 
 hardly venture to write, and the confession 
 of which will, I know, necessitate my chang- 
 ing my age back again to thirty on the 
 instant. Oh, be merciful, dear romantic 
 reader! I didn't strike the Major-General, 
 because, oh, because / agreed with him ! 
 
 I loved Nicolete, you must have felt that. 
 She was sweet to me as the bunch of white 
 flowers that, in their frail Venetian vase, stand 
 so daintily on my old bureau as I write, 
 doing their best to sweeten my thoughts. 
 Dear was she to me as the birds that out in 
 the old garden yonder sing and sing their 
 best to lift up my leaden heart. She was 
 dear as the Spring itself, she was only less 
 dear than Autumn. 
 
 Yes, black confession ! after the first 
 passion of her loss, the immediate ache of
 
 172 THE QUEST OF 
 
 her young beauty had passed, and I was able 
 to analyse what I really felt, I not only 
 agreed with him, I thanked God for the 
 Major-General ! He had saved me irom 
 playing the terrible part of executioner. 
 He had just come in time to behead the 
 Lady Jane Grey of our dreams. 
 
 I should have no qualms about tightening 
 the rope round the neck of some human 
 monster, or sticking a neat dagger or bullet 
 into a dangerous, treacherous foe, but to kill 
 a dream is a sickening business. It goes on 
 moaning in such a heart-breaking fashion, 
 and you never know when it is dead. All 
 on a sudden some night it will come wailing 
 in the wind outside your window, and you 
 must blacken your heart and harden your 
 face with another strangling grip of its slim 
 appealing throat, another blow upon its 
 angel eyes. Even then it will recover, and 
 you will go on being a murderer, making 
 for yourself day by day a murderer's face, 
 without the satisfaction of having really 
 murdered. 
 
 But what of Nicolete? do you exclaim. 
 Have you no thought for her, bleeding her
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 173 
 
 heart away in solitude? Can you so soon 
 forget those appealing eyes? Yes, I have 
 thought for her. Would God that I could 
 bear for her those growing pains of the 
 heart ! and I shall never forget those fare- 
 well eyes. But then, you see, I had firmly 
 realised this, that she would sooner recover 
 from our separation than from our marriage; 
 that her love for me, pretty and poignant 
 and dramatic while it lasted, was a book- 
 born, book-fed dream, which must die soon 
 or late, — the sooner the better for the peace 
 of the dreams that in the course of nature 
 would soon spring up to take its place. 
 
 But while I realised all this, and, with 
 a veritable aching of the heart at the loss 
 of her, felt a curious satisfaction at the turn 
 of events, still my own psychology became 
 all the more a puzzle to me, and I asked my- 
 self, with some impatience, what I would be 
 at, and what it was I really wanted. 
 
 Here had I but a few moments ago been 
 holding in my hands the very dream I had 
 set out to find, and here was I secretly 
 rejoicing to be robbed of it ! If Nicolete 
 did not fulfil the conditions of that mysti-
 
 174 THE QUEST OF 
 
 cal Golden Girl, in professed search for 
 whom I had set out that spring morning;, 
 well, the good genius of my pilgrimage felt 
 it time to resign. Better give it up at once, 
 and go back to my books and my bachelor- 
 hood, if I were so difficult to please. No 
 wonder my kind providence felt provoked. 
 It had provided me with the sweetest pink- 
 and-porcelain dream of a girl, and might 
 reasonably have concluded that his labours 
 on my behalf were at an end. 
 
 But, really, there is no need to lecture 
 me upon the charms and virtues of Nicolete, 
 for I loved them from the first moment of 
 our strange introduction, and I dream of 
 them still. There was indeed only one 
 quality of womanhood in which she was lack- 
 ing, and in which, after much serious self- 
 examination, I discovered the reason of my 
 instinctive self-sacrifice of her, — she had 
 never suffered. As my heart had warned me 
 at the beginning, "she was hoping too much 
 from life to spend one's days with." She 
 lacked the subtle half-tones of experience. 
 She lacked all that a pretty wrinkle or two 
 might have given. There was no shadowy
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 175 
 
 melancholy in her sky-clear eyes. She was 
 gay indeed, and had a certain childish 
 humour; but she had none of that humour 
 which comes of the resigned perception that 
 the world is out of joint, and that you were 
 nev'er born to set it right. These charac- 
 teristics I had yet to find in woman. There 
 was still, therefore, an object to my quest. 
 Indeed my experience had provided me with 
 a formula. I was in search of a woman 
 who, in addition to every other feminine 
 charm and virtue, was a woman who had 
 suffered. 
 
 With this prayer I turned once more to 
 the genius of my pilgrimage. "Grant me," 
 I asked, "but this — A Woman who has 
 suffered!" and, apparently as a consequence, 
 he became once more quite genial. He 
 seemed to mean that a prayer so easy to 
 grant would put any god into a good temper; 
 and possibly he smiled with a deeper mean- 
 ing too.
 
 176 THE QUKST OF 
 
 BOOK III 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 IN WHICH I RETURN TO MY RIGHT AGE 
 AND ENCOUNTER A COMMON OBJECT OF 
 THE COUNTRY 
 
 And so when the days of my mourning for 
 Nicolete were ended (and in this sentence 
 I pass over letters to and fro, — letters wild 
 from Nicolete, letters wise from Aucassin, 
 letters explanatory and apologetic from the 
 Obstacle — how the Major-General had sud- 
 denly come home quite unexpectedly and 
 compelled her to explain Nicolete's absence, 
 etc., etc. Dear Obstacle ! I should rather 
 have enjoyed a pilgrimage with her too) — I 
 found myself one afternoon again upon the 
 road. The day had been very warm and dusty, 
 and had turned sleepy towards tea-time. 
 
 I had now pretty clearly in my mind what 
 I wanted. This time it was, all other things
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 177 
 
 equal, to be " a woman who had suffered," 
 and to this end, I had, before starting out 
 once more, changed my age back again at 
 the inn and written " Aetat. 30" after my 
 name in the visitors' book. As a young 
 man I was an evident failure, and so, having 
 made the countersign, I was speedily trans- 
 formed to my old self; and I must say that 
 it was a most comfortable feeling, some- 
 thing like getting back again into an old 
 coat or an old pair of shoes. I never wanted 
 to be young again as long as I lived. Youth 
 was too much like the Sunday clothes of 
 one's boyhood. Moreover, I had a secret 
 conviction that the woman I was now in 
 search of would prefer one who had had 
 some experience at being a man, who would 
 bring her not the green plums of his love, 
 but the cunningly ripened nectarines, a man 
 to whom love was something of an art as 
 well as an inspiration. 
 
 It was in this frame of mind that I came 
 upon the following scene. 
 
 The lane was a very cloistral one, with a 
 ribbon of gravelly road, bordered on each 
 side with a rich margin of turf and a scramble 
 
 12
 
 178 thf: quzst of 
 
 of blackberry bushes, green turf banks and 
 dwarf oak-trees making a rich and plenteous 
 shade. My attention was caught firstly by 
 a bicycle lying carelessly on the turf, and 
 secondly and lastly by a graceful woman's 
 figure, recumbent and evidently sleeping 
 against the turf bank, well tucked in among 
 the afternoon shadows. My coming had not 
 aroused her, and so I stole nearer to her on 
 tiptoe. 
 
 She was a pretty woman, of a strik- 
 ing modern type, tall, well-proportioned, 
 strong, I should say, with a good complexion 
 that had evidently been made just a little 
 better. But her most striking feature was 
 an opulent mass of dark red hair, which had 
 fallen in some disorder and made quite a 
 pillow for her head. Her hat was off, lying 
 in its veil by her side, and a certain general 
 abandon of her figure, — which was clothed 
 in a short cloth skirt, cut with that unmistak- 
 able touch which we call style — betokened 
 weariness that could no longer wait for rest. 
 
 Poor child! she was tired out. She must 
 never be left to sleep on there, for she 
 seemed good to sleep till midnight.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 179 
 
 I turned to her bicycle, and, examining 
 it with the air of a man who had won silver 
 cups in his day, I speedily discovered what 
 had been the mischief. The tire of the 
 front wheel had been pierced, and a great 
 thorn was protruding from the place. Evi- 
 dently this had been too much for poor 
 Rosalind, and it was not unlikely that she 
 had cried herself to sleep. 
 
 I bent over her to look — yes, there were 
 traces of tears. Poor thing! Then I had a 
 kindly human impulse. I would mend the 
 tire, having attended ambulance classes, do 
 it very quietly so that she wouldn't hear, 
 like the fairy cobblers who used to mend 
 people's boots while they slept, and then 
 wait in ambush to watch the effect upon her 
 when she awoke. 
 
 What do you think of the idea? 
 
 But one important detail I have omitted 
 from my description of the sleeper. Her 
 left hand lay gloveless, and of the four rings 
 on her third finger one was a wedding-ring. 
 
 "Such red hair, — and a wedding-ring!" 
 I exclaimed inwardly. "How this woman 
 must have suffered ! "
 
 i8o THE QUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER n 
 
 IN WHICH T HEAL A BICYCLE AND COME 
 TO THE WHEEL OF PLEASURE 
 
 Moving the bicycle a little away, so that 
 my operations upon it might not arouse her, 
 I had soon made all right again, and when I 
 laid it once more where she had left it, she 
 was still sleeping as sound as ever. She 
 had only to sleep long enough, a sly thought 
 suggested, to necessitate her ending her 
 day's journey at the same inn as myself, 
 some five miles on the road. One virtue at 
 least the reader will allow to this history, 
 — we are seldom far away from an inn in its 
 pages. When I thought of that I sat stiller 
 than ever, hardly daring to turn over the 
 pages of Apuleius, which I had taken from 
 my knapsack to beguile the time, and, I 
 confess, to give my eyes some other occu- 
 pation than the dangerous one of gazing
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL i8i 
 
 upon her face, dangerous in more ways 
 than one, but particularly dangerous at the 
 moment, because, as everybody knows, a 
 steady gaze on a sleeping face is apt to 
 awake the sleeper. And she wasn't to be 
 disturbed ! 
 
 "No! she must n't waken before seven at 
 the latest," I said to myself, holding my 
 breath and starting in terror at every noise. 
 Once a great noisy bee was within an ace of 
 waking her, but I caught him with inspired 
 dexterity, and he buzzed around her head no 
 more. 
 
 But despite the providential Joneliness of 
 the road, there were one or two terrors that 
 could not be disposed of so summarily. 
 The worst of all was a heavy miller's cart 
 which one could hardly crush to silence in 
 one's handkerchief; but it went so slowly, 
 and both man and horses were so sleepy, 
 that they passed unheard and unnot icing. 
 
 A sprightly tramp promised greater diffi- 
 culty, and nothing but some ferocious pan- 
 tomime and a shilling persuaded him to 
 forego a choice fantasia of cockney humour. 
 
 A poor tired Italian organ-grinder, tramp-
 
 i82 THE QUEST OF 
 
 ing with an equally tired monkey along the 
 dusty roads, had to be bought off in a similar 
 manner, — though he only cost sixpence. He 
 gave me a Southern smile and shrug of com- 
 prehension, as one acquainted with affairs 
 of the heart, — which was a relief after the 
 cockney tramp's impudent expression of, no 
 doubt, a precisely similar sentiment. 
 
 And then at last, just as my watch pointed 
 to 6. 50 (how well I remember the exact mo- 
 ment !) Rosalind awoke suddenly, as women 
 and children do, sitting straight up on the 
 instant, and putting up her hands to her 
 tousled hair, with a half-startled "Where 
 am I.''" When her hair was once more 
 "respectable," she gave her skirts a shake, 
 bent sideways to pull up her stockings and 
 tighten her garters, looked at her watch, 
 and then with an exclamation at the lateness 
 of the hour, went over, with an air of 
 desperate determination, to her bicycle. 
 
 "Now for this horrid puncture!" were 
 the first words I was to hear fall from her 
 lips. 
 
 She sought for the wound in the india- 
 rubber with growing bewilderment.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 183 
 
 " Goodness ! " was her next exclamation, 
 " why, there 's nothing wrong with it. Can I 
 have been dreaming?" 
 
 " I hope your dreams have been pleasanter 
 than that," I ventured at this moment to 
 stammer, rising, a startling apparition, from 
 my ambush behind a mound of brambles; 
 and before she had time to take in the situa- 
 tion I added that I hoped she 'd excuse my 
 little pleasantry, and told her how I had 
 noticed her and the wounded bicycle, et 
 cetera, et cetera, as the reader can well 
 imagine, without giving me the trouble of 
 writing it all out. 
 
 She was sweetness itself on the instant. 
 
 " Excuse you ! " she said, " I should think 
 so. Who would n't ? You can't tell the load 
 you 've taken off my mind. I 'm sure I must 
 have groaned in my sleep — for I confess I 
 cried myself to sleep over it." 
 
 " I thought so," I said with gravity, and 
 eyes that did n't dare to smile outright till 
 they had permission, which, however, was 
 not long withheld them. 
 
 " How did you know?" 
 
 " Oh, intuition, of course — who would n't
 
 i84 THE QUEST OF 
 
 have cried themselves to sleep, and so tired 
 too ! " 
 
 "You're a nice sympathetic man, any- 
 how," she laughed ; " what a pity you don't 
 bicycle!" 
 
 "Yes," I said, "I would give a thousand 
 pounds for a bicycle at this moment." 
 
 " You ought to get a good one for that," 
 she laughed, — "all bright parts nickel, I 
 suppose ; indeed, you should get a real 
 silver frame and gold handle-bars for that, 
 don't you think? Well, it would be nice all 
 the same to have your company a few miles, 
 especially as it's growing dark," she added. 
 
 " Especially as it 's growing dark," I re- 
 peated. 
 
 "You won't be going much farther to- 
 night. Have you fixed on your inn?" I 
 continued innocently. She had — but that 
 was in a town too far to reach to-night, after 
 her long sleep. 
 
 *' You might have wakened me," she said. 
 
 "Yes, it was stupid of me not to have 
 thought of it," I answered, offering no expla- 
 nation of the dead bee which at the moment 
 I espied a little away in the grass, and saying
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 185 
 
 nothing of the merry tramp and the melan- 
 choly musician- 
 Then we talked inns, and thus she fell 
 beautifully into the pit which I had digged 
 for her; and it was presently arranged that 
 she should ride on to the Wheel of Pleasure 
 and order a dinner, which she was to do me 
 the honour of sharing with me. 
 
 I was to follow on foot as speedily as might 
 be, and it was with a high heart that I strode 
 along the sunset lanes, hearing for some time 
 the chiming of her bell in front of me, till she 
 had wheeled it quite out of hearing, and it 
 was lost in the distance. 
 
 I never did a better five miles in my life.
 
 i86 THE QUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER HI 
 
 TWO TOWN MICE AT A COUNTRY INN. 
 
 When I reached the Wheel of Pleasure, I 
 found Rosalind awaiting me in the coffee- 
 room, looking fresh from a traveller's toilette, 
 and with the welcome news that dinner was 
 on the way. By the time I had washed off 
 the day's dust it was ready, and a merry 
 meal it proved. Rosalind had none of 
 Alastor's objections to the wine-list, so we 
 drank an excellent champagne ; and as there 
 seemed to be no one in the hotel but our- 
 selves, we made ourselves at home and talked 
 and laughed, none daring to make us afraid. 
 
 At first, on sitting down to table, we had 
 grown momentarily shy, with one of those 
 sudden freaks of self-consciousness which 
 occasionally surprise one, when, midway in 
 some slightly unconventional situation to 
 which the innocence of nature has led us, we 
 realise it — "for an instant and no more."
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 187 
 
 Positively, I think that in the embarrass- 
 ment of that instant I had made some inspired 
 remark to RosaHnd about the lovely country 
 which lay dreamy in the afterglow outside our 
 window. Oh, yes, I remember the very 
 words. They were " What a heavenly land- 
 scape ! " or something equally striking. 
 
 " Yes," Rosalind had answered, " it is 
 almost as beautiful as the Strand ! " 
 
 If I'd known her better, I should have 
 exclaimed, " You dear! " and I think it pos 
 sible that I did say something to that effect, — 
 perhaps " You dear woman ! " At all events, 
 the veil of self-consciousness was rent in 
 twain at that remark, and our spirits rushed 
 together at this touch of London nature thus 
 unexpectedly revealed. 
 
 London ! I had n't realised till this moment 
 how I had been missing it all these days of 
 rustication, and my heart went out to it with 
 a vast homesickness. 
 
 "Yes! the Strand," I repeated tenderly, 
 " the Strand — at night ! " 
 
 " Indeed, yes ! what is more beautiful in 
 the whole world? " she joined in ardently. 
 
 " The wild torrents of light, the passionate
 
 i88 THE qui: ST OF 
 
 human music, the hansoms, the white shirts 
 and shawled heads, the theatres — " 
 
 " Don't speak of them or you '11 make me 
 cry," said Rosalind. 
 
 " The little suppers after the theatre — " 
 
 " Please don't," she cried, " it is cruel ; " 
 and I saw that her eyes were indeed glisten- 
 ing with tears. 
 
 " But, of course," I continued, to give a 
 slight turn aside in our talk, " it is very 
 wrong of us to have such sophisticated tastes. 
 We ought to love these lonely hills and 
 meadows far more. The natural man revels 
 in solitude, and wants no wittier company 
 than birds and flowers. Wordsworth made 
 a constant companion of a pet daisy. He 
 seldom went abroad without one or two trot- 
 ting at his side, and a skylark would keep 
 Shelley in society for a week." 
 
 " But they were poets," retorted Rosalind ; 
 "you don't call poets natural. Why, they 
 are the most unnatural of men. The natural 
 person loves the society of his kind, whereas 
 the poet runs awa)' from it." 
 
 " Well, of course, there are poets and 
 poets, poets sociable and poets very unso-
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 189 
 
 ciable. Wordsworth made the country, but 
 Lamb made the town ; and there is quite a 
 band of poets nowadays who share his dis- 
 taste for mountains, and take London for 
 their muse. If you '11 promise not to cry 
 again, I '11 recall some lines by a friend of 
 mine which were written for town-tastes like 
 ours. But perhaps you know them?" 
 
 It will gratify my friend to learn that Rosa- 
 lind had the verses I refer to by heart, and 
 started off humming, — 
 
 "Ah, London, London, our delight, 
 Great flower that opens but at night, 
 Great city of the midnight sun, 
 Whose day begins when day is done . . . 
 Like dragon-flies the hansoms hover 
 With jewelled eyes to catch the lover;" 
 
 and so on, with a gusto of appreciation that 
 must have been very gratifying to the author 
 had he been present. 
 
 Thus perceiving a taste for a certain mod- 
 ern style of poetry in my companion, I be- 
 thought me of a poem which I had written 
 on the roadside a few days before, and which, 
 I confess, I was eager to confide to some 
 sympathetic ear. I was diffident of quoting
 
 I90 THE QUEST OF 
 
 it after such lines as Rosalind had recalled, 
 but by the time we had reached our coffee, I 
 plucked up courage to mention it. I had, 
 however, the less diffidence in that it would 
 have a technical interest for her, being indeed 
 no other than a song of cycling a deux which 
 had been suggested by one of those alarmist 
 danger-posts always placed at the top of the 
 pleasantest hills, sternly warning the cyclist 
 that " this hill is dangerous," — just as in life 
 there is always some minatory notice-board 
 frowning upon us in the direction we most 
 desire to take. 
 
 But I omit further preface and produce the 
 poem : — 
 
 " This hill is dangerous," I said, 
 
 As we rode on together 
 Through sunny miles and sunny nules 
 
 Of Surrey heather ; 
 "This hill is dangerous — don't you think 
 
 We'd better walk it?" 
 " Or sit it out — more danger still I " 
 
 She smiled — " and talk it ? " 
 
 • Are you afraid ? " she turned and cried 
 
 So very brave and sweetly, — 
 Oh that brave smile that takes the heart 
 
 Captive completely I
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL igt 
 
 " Afraid ? " I said, deep in her eyes 
 
 Recklessly gazing ; 
 "For you I 'd ride into the sun 
 
 And die all blazing 1 " 
 
 " I never yet saw hill," I said, 
 
 " And was afraid to take it; 
 I never saw a foolish law, 
 
 And feared to break it. 
 Who fears a hill or fears a law 
 
 With you beside him ? 
 Who fears, dear star 1 the wildest sea 
 
 With you to guide him ? " 
 
 Then came the hill — a cataract, 
 
 A dusty swirl, before us; 
 The world stood round — a village world — 
 
 In fearful chorus. 
 Sure to be killed I Sure to be killed ! 
 
 O fools, how dare ye ! 
 Sure to be killed — and serve us right I 
 
 Ahl love, but were we? 
 
 The hill was dangerous, we knew, 
 
 And knew that we must take it; 
 The law was strong, — that too we knew. 
 
 Yet dared to break it. 
 And those who 'd fain know how we fared 
 
 Follow and find us, 
 Safe on the hills, with all the world 
 
 Safely behind us. 
 
 Rosalind smiled as I finished. " I 'm afraid," 
 she said, " the song is as dangerous as the
 
 192 THE QUEST OF 
 
 hill. Of course it has more meanings than 
 one? " 
 
 •• Perhaps two," I assented. 
 •' And the second more important than 
 the first." 
 
 " Maybe." I smiled ; " however, I hope 
 you like it." 
 
 Rosalind was very reassuring on that point, 
 and then said musingly, as if half to herself, 
 "But that hill is dangerous, you know; 
 and young people would do well to pay 
 attention to the danger-board ! " 
 
 Her voice shook as she spoke the last two 
 or three words, and I looked at her in some 
 surprise. 
 
 "Yes, I know it." she added, her voice 
 quite broken ; and before I realised what was 
 happening, there she was with her beautiful 
 head down upon the table, and sobbing as if 
 her heart would break. 
 
 " Foreiv^e me for being such a fool," she 
 managed to wring out. 
 
 Now, usually I never interrupt a woman 
 when she is crying, as it only encourages her 
 to continue; but there was something so 
 unexpected and mysterious about Rosalind's
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 195 
 
 sudden outburst that it was impossible not to 
 be sympathetic. I endeavoured to soothe 
 her with such words as seemed fitting ; and 
 as she was crying because she really could n't 
 help it, she did n't cry long. 
 
 These tears proved, what certain indica- 
 tions of manner had already hinted to me, 
 that Rosalind was more artless than I had at 
 first supposed. She was a woman of the 
 world, in that she lived in it, and loved its 
 gaieties, but there was still in her heart no 
 little of the child, as is there not in the hearts 
 of all good women — or men ? 
 
 And this you will realise when I tell you 
 the funny little story which she presently 
 confided to me as the cause of her tears. 
 
 n
 
 1^ THE QUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 MARRIAGE A LA MODE 
 
 For Rosalind was no victim of the monster 
 man, as you may have supposed her, no 
 illustration of his immemorial perfidies. 
 On the contrary, she was one half of a very 
 happy marriage, and, in a sense, her suffer- 
 ings at the moment vvere merely theoretical, 
 if one may so describe the sufferings caused 
 by a theory. But no doubt the reader would 
 prefer a little straightforward narrative. 
 
 Well, Rosalind and Orlando, as we may 
 as well call them, are two newly married 
 young people who 've been married, say, a 
 year, and who find themselves at the end of 
 it loving each other more than at the begin- 
 ning, — for you are to suppose two of the 
 tenderest, most devoted hearts that ever 
 beat as one. However, they are young 
 people of the introspective modern type, 
 with a new theory for everything.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 19S 
 
 About marriage and the law of happiness 
 in that blessed estate, they boasted the latest 
 philosophical patents. To them, among 
 other matters, the secret of unhappy mar- 
 riages was as simple as can be. It was in 
 nothing more or less than the excessive "fa- 
 miliarity " of ordinary married life, and the 
 lack of personal freedom allowed both par 
 ties to the contract. Thus love grew com- 
 monplace, and the unhappy ones to weary 
 of each other by excessive and enforced 
 association. This was obvious enough, and 
 the remedy as obvious, — separate bedrooms, 
 and a month's holiday in each year to be 
 spent apart (notoriously all people of quality 
 had separate bedrooms, and see how happy 
 they were!). These and similar other safe- 
 guards of individual liberty they had in 
 mock-earnest drawn up and signed on their 
 marriage eve, as a sort of supplemental 
 wedding service. 
 
 It would not be seemly to inquire how far 
 certain of these conditions had been kept, — 
 how often, for example, Orlando's little 
 hermit's bed had really needed remaking 
 during those twelve months ! Answer, ye
 
 196 THE QUEST OF 
 
 birds of the air that lie in your snug nests, 
 so close, so close, through the tender summer 
 nights, and maybe with two or three little 
 ones besides, — unless, indeed, ye too have 
 felt the influence of the Zcit-geist, and have 
 taken to sleeping in separate nests. 
 
 The condition with which alone we have 
 here to concern ourselves was one which 
 provided that each of the two lovers, here- 
 after to be called the husband of the one 
 part and the wife of the other part, solemnly 
 bound themselves to spend one calendar 
 month of each year out of each other's 
 society, with full and free liberty to spend 
 it wheresoever, with whomsoever, and how- 
 soever they pleased; and that this condition 
 was rigidly to be maintained, whatever 
 immediate effort it might cost, as the parties 
 thereto believed that so would their love the 
 more likely maintain an enduring tenderness 
 and an unwearied freshness. And to this 
 did Orlando and his Rosalind set their bands 
 and hearts and lips. 
 
 Now, wisdom is all very well till the time 
 comes to api)ly it ; and as that month of 
 June approached in which they had designed
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 197 
 
 to give their love a holiday, they had found 
 their courage growing less and less. Their 
 love didn't want a holiday; and when 
 Orlando had referred to the matter during 
 the early days of May, Rosalind had burst 
 into tears, and begged him to reconsider a 
 condition which they had made before they 
 really knew what wedded love was. But 
 Orlando, though in tears himself (so Rosa- 
 lind averred), had a higher sense of their 
 duty to their ideal, and was able, though in 
 tears, to beg her look beyond the moment, 
 and realise what a little self-denial now 
 might mean in the years to come. They 
 had n't kept any other of their resolutions, 
 — thus Rosalind let it out! — this must be 
 kept. 
 
 And thus it had come about that Orlando 
 had gone off for his month's holiday with a 
 charming girl, who, with the cynic, will no 
 doubt account for his stern adherence to 
 duty; and Rosalind had gone off for hers 
 with a pretty young man whom she 'd liked 
 well enough to go to the theatre and to 
 supper with, — a young man who was indeed a 
 dear friend, and a vivacious, sympathetic
 
 198 THE QUEST OF 
 
 companion, but whom, as a substitute for 
 Orlando, she immediately began to hate. 
 SucH is the female heart ! 
 
 The upshot of the experiment, so far as 
 she was concerned, was that she had quar- 
 relled with her companion, and had gone off 
 in search of her husband, on which search 
 she was embarked at the moment of my en- 
 countering her. The tears, therefore, — that 
 is, the first lot of tears by the roadside, — 
 had not been all on account of the injured 
 bicycle, you see. 
 
 Now the question was. How had Orlando 
 been getting on.'' I had an intuition that in 
 his case the experiment had proved more 
 enjoyable, but I am not one to break the 
 bruised reed by making such a suggestion. 
 On the contrary, I expressed my firm con- 
 viction that Orlando was probably even more 
 miserable than she was. 
 
 "Do you really think so.''" she asked 
 eagerly, her poor miserable face growing 
 bright a moment with hope and gratitude. 
 
 "Undoubtedly," I answered sententiously. 
 " To put the case on the most general prin- 
 ciples, apart from Orlando's great love for
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 199 
 
 you, it is an eternal truth of masculine 
 sentiment that man always longs for the 
 absent woman." 
 
 " Are you quite sure ? " asked Rosalind, 
 with an unconvinced half-smile. 
 
 "Absolutely." 
 
 "I thought," she continued, "that it was 
 just the other way about ; that it was presence 
 and not absence that made the heart of man 
 grow fonder, and that if a man's best girl, 
 so to say, was away, he was able to make 
 himself very comfortable with his second- 
 best!" 
 
 "In some cases, of course, it's true," I 
 answered, unmoved; "but with a love like 
 yours and Orlando's, it's quite different." 
 
 " Oh, do you really mean it ? " 
 
 "Certainly I do; and your mistake has 
 been in supposing that an experiment which 
 no few every-day married couples would be 
 only too glad to try, was ever meant for two 
 such love-birds as you. Laws and systems 
 are meant for the unhappy and the untract- 
 able, not for people like you, for whom Love 
 makes its own laws." 
 
 "Yes, that is what we used to say; and
 
 200 THE QUEST OF 
 
 indeed, wc thought that this was one of 
 love's laws, — this experiment, as you 
 call it." 
 
 "But it was quite a mistake," I went on 
 in my character as matrimonial oracle. 
 " Love never made a law so cruel, a law that 
 would rob true lovers of each other's society 
 for a whole month in a year, stretching them 
 on the rack of absence — " There my 
 period broke down, so I began another less 
 ambitiously planned. 
 
 "A whole month in a year! Think what 
 that would mean in a lifetime. How long 
 do you expect to live and love together.' Say 
 another fifty years at the most. Well, fifty 
 ones are fifty. Fifty months equal — four 
 twelves are forty-eight and two over — four 
 years and two months. Yes, out of the 
 short life God allows even for the longest 
 love you would voluntarily throw away four 
 years and two months ! " 
 
 This impressive calculation had a great 
 effect on poor Rosalind ; and it is a secondary 
 matter that it and its accompanying wisdom 
 may have less weight with the reader, as for 
 the moment Rosalind was my one concern.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 201 
 
 " But, of course, we have perfect trust in 
 each other," said Rosalind presently, with 
 charming illogicality. 
 
 "No doubt," I said; "but Love, like a 
 good householder (ahem !), does well not to 
 live too much on trust." 
 
 "But surely love means perfect trust," 
 said Rosalind. 
 
 "Theoretically, yes; practically, no. On 
 the contrary, it means exactly the opposite. 
 Trust, perfect trust, with loved ones far 
 away! No, it is an inhuman ideal, and the 
 more one loves the less one lives up to it. 
 If not, what do these tears mean.?" 
 
 "Oh, no!" Rosalind retorted, with a 
 flush, "you mustn't say that. I trust 
 Orlando absolutely. It isn't that; it's 
 simply that I can't bear to be away from 
 him." 
 
 What women mean by "trusting" might 
 afford a subject for an interesting disquisi- 
 tion. However, I forbore to pursue the 
 matter, and answered Rosalind's remark in 
 a practical spirit. 
 
 "Well, then," I said, "if that's all, the 
 thing to do is to find Orlando, tell him that
 
 202 THE QUEST OF 
 
 you cannot bear it, and spend the rest of 
 your holiday, you and he, together." 
 
 "That's what I thought," said Rosalind. 
 
 "Unfortunately," I continued, "owing to 
 your foolish arrangement not to tell each 
 other where you were going and not to write, 
 as being incompatible with Perfect Trust, 
 you don't know where Orlando is at the 
 present moment." 
 
 "No; but I have a good guess," said 
 Rosalind. "There's a smart little water- 
 ing-place, not so many miles from here, 
 called Yellowsands, a sort of secret little 
 Monaco, which not many people know of, 
 a wicked-innocent gay little place, where 
 we 've often talked of going. I think it 's 
 very likely that Orlando has gone there; 
 and that 's just where I was going when we 
 met." 
 
 I will tell the reader more about Yellow- 
 sands in the next chapter. Meanwhile, let 
 us complete Rosalind's arrangements. The 
 result of our conversation was that she was 
 to proceed to Yellowsands on the morrow, 
 and that I was to follow as soon as possible, 
 so as to be available should she chance to
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 203 
 
 need any advice, and at all events to give 
 myself the pleasure of meeting her again. 
 
 This arranged, we said good-night, Rosa- 
 lind with ever such a brightened-up face, of 
 which I thought for half an hour and then 
 fell asleep to dream of Yellowsands.
 
 204 THE QUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 CONCERNING THE HAVEN OF YELLOWSANDS 
 
 On the morrow, at the peep of day, Rosalind 
 was off to seek her lord. An hour or so 
 after I started in leisurely pursuit. 
 
 Yellowsands ! I had heard in a vague way 
 of the place, as a whim of a certain young 
 nobleman who combined brains with the 
 pursuit of pleasure. Like most ideas, it 
 was simple enough when once conceived. 
 Any one possessing a mile or two of secluded 
 seaboard, cut off on the land side by pre- 
 cipitous approaches, and including a shel- 
 tered river mouth ingeniously hidden by 
 nature, in the form of a jutting wall of rock, 
 from the sea, might have made as good use 
 of these natural opportunities as the noble- 
 man in question, had they only been as wise 
 and as rich. William Blake proposed to 
 rebuild Jerusalem in this green and pleasant
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 205 
 
 land. My lord proposed to erect a minia- 
 ture Babylon amid similar pleasant sur- 
 roundings, a little dream-city by the sea, a 
 home for the innocent pleasure-seeker stifled 
 by the puritanism of the great towns, refu- 
 gium peccatorufn in this island of the saints. 
 
 "Once it was the Puritan Fathers who 
 left our coasts," he is recorded to have said; 
 "nowadays it is our Prodigal Sons." 
 
 No doubt it was in further elaboration of 
 this aphorism that the little steamboat that 
 sailed every other day from Yellowsands to 
 the beckoning shores of France was called 
 "the Mayflower." 
 
 My lord's plan had been simple. By the 
 aid of cunning architects he had first blasted 
 his harbour into shape, then built his hotels 
 and pleasure-palaces, and then leased them 
 to dependants of his who knew the right sort 
 of people, and who knew that it was as much 
 as their lease was worth to find accommoda- 
 tion for teetotal amateur photographers or 
 wistful wandering Sunday-school treats. As, 
 unfortunately, the Queen's highway ran 
 down in tortuous descent to the handful of 
 fishermen's cottages that had clung there
 
 2o6 THE QUEST OF 
 
 limpet-like for ages, there was always a 
 chance of such a stray visitation; but it was 
 remote, and the whole place, hand and heart, 
 was in the pocket of my lord. 
 
 So much to give the reader some idea of 
 the secret watering-place of Yellowsands, 
 situated at the mouth of that romantic little 
 torrent, the river Sly. Such further descrip- 
 tion as may be needed may be kept till we 
 come within sight of its gilded roofs and 
 marble terraces.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 207 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE MOORLAND OF THE APOCALYPSE 
 
 I RECKONED that it would take me two or 
 three days, leisurely walking, to reach Yel- 
 lowsands. Rosalind would, of course, arrive 
 there long before me; but that I did not 
 regret, as I was in a mood to find company 
 in my own thoughts. 
 
 Her story gave me plenty to think of, I 
 dwelt particularly on the careless extrava- 
 gance of the happy. Here were two people 
 to whom life had given casually what I was 
 compelled to go seeking lonely and footsore 
 through the world, and with little hope of 
 finding it at the end; and yet were they 
 so little aware of their good fortune as to 
 risk it over a trumpery theory, a shadow of 
 pseudo-philosophy. Out of the deep dark 
 ocean of life Love had brought them his 
 great moon-pearl, and they sat on the boat's
 
 2o8 THE QUEST OF 
 
 edge carelessly tossing it from one to the 
 other, unmindful of the hungry fathoms on 
 every side. A sudden slip, and they had 
 lost it for ever, and might only watch its 
 shimmering fall to the bottom of the world. 
 Theories! Theories are for the unknown 
 and the unhappy. Who will trouble to 
 theorise about Heaven when he has found 
 Heaven itself? Theories are for the poor- 
 devil outcast, — for him who stands outside 
 the confectioner's shop of life without a 
 penny in his pocket, while the radiant pur- 
 chasers pass in and out through the doors, — 
 for him who watches with wistful eyes this 
 and that sugared marvel taken out of the 
 window by mysterious hands, to bless some 
 happy customer inside. He is not fool 
 enough even to hope for one of those glister- 
 ing masterpieces of frosted sugar and silk 
 flowers, which rise to pinnacles of snowy 
 sweetness, white mountains of blessedness, 
 rich inside, they say, with untold treasures 
 for the tooth that is sweet. No ! he craves 
 nothing but a simple Bath-bun of happiness, 
 and even that is denied him. 
 
 Would I ever find my Bath-bun ? I dis-
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 209 
 
 consolately asked myself. I had been seek- 
 ing it now for some little time, and seemed 
 no nearer than when I set out. I had seen 
 a good many Bath-buns on my pilgrimage, 
 it is true. Some I have not had space to 
 confide to the reader; but somehow or other 
 they had not seemed the unmistakably 
 predestined for which I was seeking. 
 
 And oh^ how I could love a girl, if she 
 would only give me the chance, — that is, 
 be the right girl! Oh, Sylvia Joy! where 
 art thou.? Why so long dost thou remain 
 hidden " in shady leaves of destiny " ? 
 
 " Seest thou thy lover lowly laid, 
 Hear'st thou the sighs that rend his breast?" 
 
 And then, as the novelists say, "a strange 
 thing happened." 
 
 The road I was tramping at the moment 
 was somewhat desolate. It ran up from a 
 small market town through a dreary undulat- 
 ing moorland, forking off here and there 
 to unknown villages of which the horizon 
 gave no hint. Its cheerless hillocks were 
 all but naked of vegetation, for a never very 
 flourishing growth of heather had recently 
 
 14
 
 2IO THE QUEST OF 
 
 been burnt right down to the unkindly- 
 looking earth, leaving a dwarf black forest 
 of charred sticks very grim to the eye and 
 heart; while the dull surface of a small 
 lifeless-looking lake added the final touch to 
 the Dead-Sea mournfulness of the prospect. 
 
 Suddenly I became aware of the fluttering 
 of a grey dress a little ahead of me. Uncon- 
 sciously I had been overtaking a tall young 
 woman walking in the same direction as my- 
 self, with a fine athletic carriage of her figure 
 and a noble movement of her limbs. 
 
 She walked manfully, and as I neared her 
 I could hear the sturdy ring of her well-shod 
 feet upon the road. There was an air of 
 expectancy about her walk, as though she 
 looked to be met presently by some one due 
 from the opposite direction. 
 
 It was curious that I had not noticed her 
 before, for she must have been in sight 
 for some time. No doubt my melancholy 
 abstraction accounted for that, and perhaps 
 her presence there was to be explained by a 
 London train which I had listlessly observed 
 come in to the town an hour before. This 
 surmise was confirmed, as presently, over the
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 211 
 
 brow of a distant undulation in the road, I 
 descried a farmer's gig driven by another 
 young woman. The gig immediately hoisted 
 a handkerchief; so did my pedestrian. At 
 this moment I was within a yard or two of 
 overtaking her. And it was then the strange 
 thing happened. 
 
 Distance had lent no enchantment which 
 nearness did not a hundred times repay. 
 The immediate impression of strength and 
 distinction which the first glimpse of her 
 had made upon me was more and more veri- 
 fied as I drew closer to her. The carriage 
 of her head was no whit less noble than the 
 queenly carriage of her limbs, and her glo- 
 rious chestnut hair, full of warm tints of 
 gold, was massed in a sumptuous simplicity 
 above a neck that would have made an 
 average woman's fortune. This glowing 
 description, however, must be lowered or 
 heightened in tone by the association of 
 these characteristics with an undefinable 
 simplicity of mien, a certain slight rusticity 
 of effect. The town spoke in her well-cut 
 gown and a few simple adornments, but the 
 dryad still moved inside.
 
 -12 THE QUEST OF 
 
 T suppose most men, even in old -igc, 
 feel a certain anxiety, conscious or not, as 
 they overtake a woman whose back view 
 is in the least attractive. I confess that I 
 felt a more than usual, indeed a quite irra- 
 tional, perturbation of the blood, as, com- 
 ing level with her, I dared to look into her 
 face. As I did so she involuntarily turned 
 to look at me — turned to look at me, 
 did I say.^ "To look" is a feeble verb 
 indeed to express the unexpected shock of 
 beauty to which I was suddenly exposed. I 
 cannot describe her features, for somehow 
 features always mean little to me. They 
 were certainly beautifully moulded, and her 
 skin was of a lovely pale olive, but the life 
 of her face was in her great violet eyss and 
 her wonderful mouth. Thus suddenly to 
 look into her face was like unexpectetlly to 
 come upon moon and stars reflected in some 
 lonely pool. T suppose the look lasted only a 
 second or two ; but it left me dazzled as that 
 king in the Eastern tale, who seemed to have 
 lived whole dream-lives between dipping, his 
 head into a bowl of water and taking it out 
 again. Similarly in that moment I seemed
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 213 
 
 f.o have dived into this unknown girl's eyes, 
 to have walked through the treasure palaces 
 of her soul, to have stood before the flaming 
 gates of her heart, to have gathered silver 
 flowers in the fairy gardens of her dreams. 
 I had followed her white-robed spirit across 
 the moonlit meadows of her fancy, and by 
 her side had climbed the dewy ladder of the 
 morning star, and then suddenly I had been 
 whirled up again to the daylight through the 
 magic fountains of her eyes. 
 
 I '11 tell you more about that look presently ! 
 Meanwhile the gig approached, and the two 
 girls exchanged affectionate greetings. 
 
 "Tom hasn't come with you, then.-'" said 
 the other girl, who was evidently her sister, 
 and who was considerably more rustic in 
 style and accent. She said it with a curious 
 mixture of anxiety and relief. 
 
 "No," answered the other simply, and I 
 thought I noticed a slight darkening of her 
 face. Tom was evidently her husband. So 
 she was married ! 
 
 " Yes ! " said a fussy hypocrite of reason 
 within me, "and what's that to do with 
 you?"
 
 2T4 THE QUEST OF 
 
 "Everything, you fool!" answered a ro- 
 buster voice in my soul, kicking the feeble 
 creature clean out of my head on the instant. 
 
 For, absurd as it may sound, with thai 
 look into those Arabian Nights' eyes, had 
 come somewhere out of space an overwhelm- 
 ing intuition, nay, an unshakable conviction, 
 that the woman who was already being rolled 
 away from me down the road in that Dis's 
 car of a farmer's gig, was now and for ever 
 and before all worlds the woman God had 
 created for me, and that, unless I could be 
 hers and she mine, there would be no home, 
 no peace for either of us so long as we 
 lived. 
 
 And yet she was being carried away further 
 and further every moment, while I gazed 
 after her, aimlessly standing in the middle 
 of the road. Why did I not call to her, 
 overtake her? In a few moments she would 
 be lost to me for ever — 
 
 Though I was unaware of it, this hesita- 
 tion was no doubt owing to a stealthy return 
 of reason by the back-door of my mind. In 
 fact, he presently dared to raise his voice 
 again. "I don't deny," he ventured, ready
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 215 
 
 any moment to flee for his life, "that she is 
 written yours in all the stars, and particu- 
 larly do I see it written on the face of the 
 moon ; but you must n't forget that many are 
 thus meant for each other who never meet, 
 not to speak of marrying. It is such contra- 
 dictions between the purposes and perform- 
 ance of the Creator that make life — 'life; 
 you'll never see her again, so make your 
 mind easy — " 
 
 At that moment the gig was on the point of 
 turning a corner into a dark pine-wood ; but 
 just ere it disappeared, — was it fancy? — I 
 seemed to have caught the flash of a momen- 
 tarily fluttering handkerchief. "Won't I? 
 you fool ! " I exclaimed, savagely smiting 
 reason on the cheek, as I sprang up wildly 
 to wave mine; but the road was already 
 blank. 
 
 At this a sort of panic possessed me, and 
 like a boy I raced down the road after her. 
 To lose her like this, at the very moment 
 that she had been revealed to me. It was 
 more than I could bear. Past the dreary 
 lake, through the little pine-wood I ran, and 
 then I was brought to a halt, panting, by
 
 216 THE QUEST OF 
 
 cross-roads and a finger-post. An involun- 
 tary memory of Nicolete sang to me as I 
 read the quaint names of the villages to one 
 of which the Vision was certainly wending. 
 Yes ! I was bound on one more journey to 
 the moon, but alas ! there was no heavenly 
 being by my side to point the way. Oh, 
 agony, which was the road she had taken.' 
 
 It never occurred to me till the following 
 day that I might have been able to track her 
 by the wheel-marks of the gig on the dusty 
 summer road. Instead I desperately resorted 
 to the time-honoured expedient of setting up 
 a stick and going in the direction of its fall. 
 Like most ancient guide-posts, it led me 
 quite wrong, down into a pig's-trough of a 
 hamlet whither I felt sure she couldn't have 
 been bound. Then I ran back in a frenzy, 
 and tried the other road, — as if it could be 
 any use, with at least three quarters of an 
 hour gone since I had lost sight of her. Of 
 course I had no luck; and finally, hot and 
 worn out with absurd excitement, I threw 
 myself down in a meadow and called myself 
 an ass, — which I undoubtedly was. 
 
 For of all the fancies that had obsessed
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 217 
 
 my moonstruck brain, this was surely the 
 maddest. Suppose I had overtaken the girl, 
 what could I have said to her? And, sup- 
 pose she had listened to me, how did I know 
 she was the girl I imagined her to be? 
 But this was sheer reason again, and has no 
 place in a fantastic romance. So I hasten 
 to add that the mood was one of brief dura- 
 tion, and that no cold-water arguments were 
 able to quench the fire which those eyes had 
 set aflame within me, no daylight philosophy 
 had any power to dispel the dream of a face 
 which was now my most precious possession, 
 as I once more took up my stick and list- 
 lessly pursued my vi^ay to Yellowsands. 
 
 For I had one other reason than my own 
 infatuation, or thought I had. Yes, brief 
 and rapid as our glance at each other had 
 been, I had fancied in her eyes a momentary 
 kindling as they met mine, a warm summer- 
 lightning which seemed for a second to light 
 up for me the inner heaven of her soul. 
 
 Of one feeling, however, I was sure, — 
 that on my side this apocalyptic recognition 
 of her, as it had seemed, was no mere pas- 
 sionate correspondence of sex, no mere spelJ
 
 2i8 THE OUKST OF 
 
 of a beautiful face (for such passion and 
 such glamour I had made use of opportuni- 
 ties to study), but was indeed the flaming 
 up of an elemental affinity, profounder than 
 sex, deeper than reason, and ages older than 
 speech. 
 
 But it was a fancy, for all that? Yes, one 
 of those fancies that are fancies on earth, 
 but facts in heaven. Perhaps you don't 
 believe in them. Well, I 'm afraid that 
 cannot be helped
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 219 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 " COME UNTO THESE YELLOW SANDS t " 
 
 Nothing further happened to me till I 
 reached Yellowsands, except an exciting 
 ride on the mail-coach, which connected it 
 with the nearest railway-station some twenty- 
 miles away. For the last three or four miles 
 the road ran along the extreme precipitous 
 verge of cliffs that sloped, a giant's wall of 
 grassy mountain, right away down to a dreamy 
 amethystine floor of sea, miles and miles, as 
 it seemed, below. To ride on that coach, 
 as it gallantly staggered betwixt earth and 
 heaven, was to know all the ecstasy of flying, 
 with an added touch of danger, which birds 
 and angels, and others accustomed to fly, can 
 never experience. And then at length the 
 glorious mad descent down three plunging 
 cataracts of rocky road, the exciting rattling 
 of the harness, the grinding of the strong 
 brakes, the driver's soothing calls to h\»
 
 220 THE GUEST OF 
 
 horses, and the long burnished horn trailing 
 wild music behind us, like invisible banners 
 of aerial brass, — oh, it stirred the dullest 
 blood amongst us thus as it were to tear 
 down the sky towards the white roofs of 
 Yellowsands, glittering here and there among 
 the clouds of trees which filled the little 
 valley almost to the sea's edge, while floating 
 up to us came soft strains of music, silken 
 and caressing, as though the sea itself sang 
 us a welcome. Had you heard it from 
 aboard the Argo, you would have declared 
 it to be the sirens singing, and it would have 
 been found necessary to lash you to the 
 mast. But there were no masts to lash you 
 to in Yellowsands — and of the sirens it is 
 not yet time to speak. 
 
 It was the golden end of afternoon as the 
 coach stopped in front of the main hotel, 
 The Golden Fortune ; and for the benefit of 
 any with not too long purses who shall here- 
 after light on Yellowsands, and be alarmed 
 at the name and the marble magnificence of 
 that delightful hotel, I may say that the 
 charges there were surprisingly " reason- 
 able," owing to one other wise provision of
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 221 
 
 the young lord and master of that happy- 
 place, who had had the wit to realise that 
 the nicest and brightest and prettiest people 
 were often the poorest. Yellowsands, there- 
 fore, was carried on much like a club, to 
 which you had only to be the right sort of 
 person to belong. I was relieved to find 
 that the hotel people evidently considered 
 me the right sort of person, and did n't 
 take me for a Sunday-school treat, — for 
 presently I found myself in a charming little 
 corner bedroom, whence I could survey the 
 whole extent of the little colony of pleasure. 
 The Golden Fortune was curiously situ- 
 ated, perched at the extreme sea-end of a 
 little horse-shoe bay hollowed out between 
 two headlands, the points of which ap- 
 proached each other so closely that the 
 river Sly had but a few yards of rocky chan- 
 nel through which to pour itself into the sea. 
 The Golden Fortune, therefore, backed by 
 towering woodlands, looked out to sea at 
 one side, across to the breakwater headland 
 on another, and on its land side commanded 
 a complete view of the gay little haven, with 
 its white houses built terrace on terrace upon
 
 222 TII1<: QUEST CK 
 
 its wooded slopes, connected by flights ol 
 zigzag steps, by which the apparently inac- 
 cessible shelves and platforms circulated their 
 gay life down to the gay heart of the place, — 
 the circular boulevard, exquisitely leafy and 
 cool, where one found the great casino and 
 the open-air theatre, the exquisite orchestra, 
 into which onl}' the mellowest brass and the 
 subtlest strings were admitted, and the Cafd 
 du Ciel, charmingly situated among the trees, 
 where the boulevard became a bridge, foi 
 a moment, at the mouth of the river Sly. 
 Here one might gaze up the green rocky 
 defile through which the Sly made pebbly 
 music, and through which wound romantic 
 walks and natural galleries, where far inland 
 you might wander 
 
 " From dewy dawn to dewy night. 
 And have one with you wander/ng," 
 
 or where you might turn and look across ihi 
 still lapping harbour, out through the little 
 neck of light between the headlands to the 
 shimmering sea beyond, — your ears filled 
 with a melting tide of sweet sounds, the 
 murmur of the streams and the gentle surg-
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 223 
 
 ing of the sea, the rippling of leaves, the soft 
 restless whisper of women's gowns, and the 
 music of their vowelled voices. It was here 
 I found myself sitting at sunset, alone, but so 
 completely under the spell of the place that 
 I needed no companion. The place itself 
 was companion enough. The electric fairy 
 lamps had popped alight ; and as the sun 
 sank lower, Yellowsands seemed like a 
 glowing crown of light floating upon the 
 water. 
 
 I had as yet failed to catch any sight of 
 Rosalind; so I sat alone, and so far as I had 
 any thoughts or feelings, beyond a con- 
 sciousness of heavenly harmony with my 
 surroundings, they were for that haunting 
 unknown face with the violet eyes and the 
 heavy chestnut hair. 
 
 Presently, close by, the notes of a guitar 
 came like little gold butterflies out of the 
 twilight, and then a woman's voice rose like 
 a silver bird on the air. It was a gay wooing 
 measure to which she sang. I listened witk 
 ears and heart. " All ye," it went, — 
 
 All ye who seek for pleasure, 
 Here find it without measure- -
 
 224 TIIK QUEST OF 
 
 No one to say 
 A body nay, 
 And naught l)ut love and leisure. 
 
 All ye who seek forgetting, 
 
 Leave frowns and fears and frettingj 
 
 Here by the sea 
 
 Are fair and free 
 To give you peace and petting. 
 
 All ye whose hearts are breaking 
 For somebody forsaking, 
 
 We Ml count you dear. 
 
 And heal you here, 
 And send you home love-making. 
 
 "Bravo!" I cried involuntarily, as tht 
 song ended amid multitudinous applause; 
 and I thus attracted the attention of another 
 who sat near me as lonely as myself, but 
 evidently quite at home in the place. 
 
 " You have n't heard our sirens sing 
 before?" he said, turning to me with a 
 pleasant smile, and thus we fell into talk of 
 the place and its pleasures. 
 
 " There 's one feature of the place I might 
 introduce you to if you care for a stroll," 
 he said presently. " Have you heard of 
 The Trvelve Golden-Haired Bar-maids ? " I 
 had n't, but the fantastic name struck my
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 225 
 
 fancy. It was, he explained, the name given 
 to a favourite buffet at the Hotel Aphrodite, 
 which was served by twelve wonderful girls, 
 not one under six feet in height, and all with 
 the most glorious golden hair. It was a whim 
 of the management, he said. 
 So, of course, we went.
 
 226 THE QUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE TWELVE GOLDEN-HAIRED BAR-MAIDS. 
 
 Now it was not without some boyish nervous- 
 ness that I followed my newly made friend, 
 for I confess that I have ever been a poor 
 hand at talking to bar-maids. It is, I am 
 convinced, an art apart, an art like any other, 
 — needing first the natural gift, then the long 
 patient training, and finally the courageous 
 practice. Alas for me, I possessed neither 
 gift, training, nor courage. Courage I lacked 
 most of all. It was in vain that I said to 
 myself that it was like swimming, — all that 
 was needed was " confidence." That was the 
 very thing I could n't muster. No doubt I 
 am handicapped by a certain respectful 
 homage which I always feel involuntarily to 
 any one in the shape of woman, for anything 
 savouring of respect is the last thing to win 
 the bar-maid heart divine. The man to win 
 her is he who calls loudly for his drink, without
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 227 
 
 a *' Please " or a " Thank you," throws his hat 
 at the back of his head, gulps down half his 
 glass, and, while drawing breath for the other 
 half, takes a hard, indifferent look at her, and 
 in an off-hand voice throws her some fatuous, 
 mirthless jest. 
 
 Now, I 've never been able to do this in the 
 convincing grand manner of the British male; 
 and whatever I have said, the effect has been 
 the same. I 've talked about theatres and 
 music-halls, of events of the day, I 've even 
 — Heaven help me — talked of racing and 
 football, but I might as well have talked 0/ 
 Herbert Spencer. I suppose I did n't talk 
 about them in the right way. I 'm sure it 
 must be my fault somewhere, for certainly 
 they seem easy enough to please, poor things ! 
 However, my failure remains, and sometimes 
 even I find it extremely hard to attract their 
 attention in the ordinary way of business. I 
 don't mind my neighbour being preferred 
 befoi-e me, but I do object to his being 
 served before me ! 
 
 So, I say, I could n't but tremble at the 
 vision of those golden-haired goddesses, stand- 
 ing with immobile faces by their awful altars
 
 228 THE QUEST OP 
 
 Indeed, had I realised how superbly impres- 
 sive they were going to be, 1 think I must 
 have declined the adventure altogether, — 
 for, robed in lustrous ivory-white linen were 
 those figures of undress marble, the wealth of 
 their glorious bodies pressing out into bosoms 
 magnificent as magnolias (nobler lines and 
 curves Greece herself has never known), tow- 
 ering in throats of fluted alabaster, and flower- 
 ing in coiftures of imperial gold. Nor was 
 their temple less magnificent. To make it 
 fair, Ruskin had relit the seven lamps of 
 architecture, and written the seven labours 
 of Hercules; for these windows through a 
 whole youth Burne Jones had worshipped 
 painted glass at Oxford, and to breathe 
 romance into these frescos had Rossetti been 
 born, and Dante born again. Men had gone 
 to prison and to death that this temple of 
 Whiskey-and-Soda might be fair. 
 
 Strange, in truth, are the ministrations to 
 which Beaut>' is called. Out of the high 
 heaven is she summoned, from mystic com- 
 munion with her own perfection, from majes- 
 tic labours in the Sistine Chapel of the Stars, 
 - yea, she must put aside her gold-leaf and
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 229 
 
 purples and leave unfinished the very panels 
 of the throne of God, — that Circe shall have 
 her palace, and her worshippers their gilded 
 
 sty. 
 
 As there were at least a score of " wor- 
 shippers " round each Circe, my nervousness 
 became unimportant, and therefore passed. 
 Thus, as my companion and I sat at one of 
 the little tables, from which we might gaze 
 upon the sea without and Aphrodite within, 
 my eyes were able to fly like bees from one 
 fair face to another. Finally, they settled 
 upon a Circe less besieged of the hoarse and 
 grunting mob. She was conspicuously less 
 in height, her hair was rather bright red 
 than golden, and her face had more mean- 
 ings than the faces of her fellows. 
 
 "Why," in a flash it came to me, "it's 
 Rosalind ! " and clean forgetting to be shy, 
 or polite to my companion, I hastened across 
 to her, to be greeted instantly in a manner 
 so exclusively intimate that the little crowd 
 about her presently spread itself among the 
 other crowds, and we were left to talk alone. 
 
 "Well," I said, "you're a nice girii 
 Whatever are you doing here?"
 
 230 THE GUEST OF 
 
 " Yes, I 'm afraid you '11 have but a strange 
 opinion of mc," she said ; " but I love all 
 experience, — it's such fun, — and when I 
 heard that there was a sudden vacancy for a 
 golden-haired beauty in this place, I couldn't 
 resist appl}'ing, and to my surprise they took 
 me — and here I am! Of course I shall 
 only stay till Orlando appears — which," 
 she added mournfully — " he has n't done 
 yet." 
 
 Her hours were long and late, but she had 
 two half-days free in the Aveek, and for these 
 of course I engaged myself. 
 
 Meanwhile I spent as much time as 1 
 decently could at her side; but it was im^ 
 possible to monopolise her, and the rest o< 
 my time there was no difficulty in filling up, 
 you may be sure, in so gay a place. 
 
 Two or three nights after this, a littl<» 
 before dinner-time, while I was standing talk' 
 ing to her, she suddenly went very white, 
 and in a fluttering voice gasped, " Look 
 yonder ! " I looked. A rather slight dark- 
 haired young man was entering the bar, with 
 a very stylish pretty woman at his side. As 
 they sat down and claimed the waiter, some
 
 THE GOLDEN GTRL 231 
 
 distance away, Rosalind whispered, "That's 
 my husband ! " 
 
 " Oh ! " I said ; " but that 's no reason for 
 your fainting. Pull yourself together. Take 
 a drop of brandy." But woman will never 
 take the most obvious restorative, and Rosa- 
 lind presently recovered without the brandy. 
 She looked covertly at her husband, with 
 tragic eves. 
 
 " He 's much younger than I imagined 
 him," I said, — reserving for myself the satis- 
 faction which this discovery had for me. 
 
 " Oh, yes, he 's really quite a boy," said 
 Rosalind ; adding under her breath, " Dear 
 fellow ! how I love him ! " 
 
 " And hate him too ! " she superadded, as 
 she observed his evident satisfaction with his 
 present lot. Indeed the experiment appeared 
 to be working most successfully with him ; 
 nor, looking at his companion, could I won- 
 der. She was a sprightly young woman, 
 very smart and merry and decorously volup- 
 tuous, and of that fascinating prettiness that 
 wins the hearts of boys and storms the foot- 
 lights. One of her characteristics soothed 
 the heart of Rosalind. She had splendid red 
 hair, almost as good as her own.
 
 232 THE QUEST OF 
 
 " He 's been faithful to my hair, at all 
 events," she said, trying to be nonchalant. 
 
 " And the eyes are not unlike," I added, 
 meaning well. 
 
 " I 'm sorry you think so," said Rosalind, 
 evidently piqued. 
 
 " Well, never mind," I tried to makepeace, 
 "she hasn't your hands," — I knew that 
 women cared more about their hands than 
 their faces. 
 
 " How do you know? " she retorted ; "you 
 cannot see through her gloves." 
 
 " Would any gloves disguise your hands? " 
 I persisted. " They would shine through the 
 mittens of an Esquimau." 
 
 " Well, enough of that ! See — I know it 's 
 wickedly mean of me — but could n't you 
 manage to sit somewhere near them and 
 hear what they are saying? Of course you 
 need n't tell me anything it would be mean 
 to hear, but only what — " 
 
 " You would like to know." 
 
 But this little plot died at its birth, for that 
 very minute the threatened couple arose, and 
 went out arm in arm, apparently as absurdly 
 happy as two young people can be.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 233 
 
 As they passed out, one of Rosalind's 
 fellow bar-maids turned to her and said, — 
 
 " You know who that was? " 
 
 " Who ? " said Rosalind, startled. 
 
 " That pretty woman who went out with 
 that young Johnny just now ? " 
 
 " No ; who is she ? " 
 
 " Why, that 's " — and readers with heart- 
 disease had better brace themselves up for a 
 great shock — *' that 's 
 
 Sylvia Joy. 
 the famous dancer ! "
 
 234 THE QUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 SYLVIA JOY 
 
 Sylvia Joy! And I hadn't so much as 
 looked at her petticoat for weeks ! But I 
 would now. The violet eyes and the heavy 
 chestnut hair rose up in moralising vision. 
 Yes ! God knows, they were safe in my 
 heart, but petticoats were another matter. 
 Sylvia Joy! Well, did you ever.? Well, 
 I 'm d d ! Sylvia Joy ! 
 
 I should have been merely superhuman 
 had I been able to control the expression of 
 surprise which convulsed my countenance at 
 the sound of that most significant name. 
 
 "The name seems familiar to you," said 
 Rosalind, a little surprised and a little 
 eagerly; "do you know the lady?" 
 
 "Slightly," I prevaricated. 
 
 "How fortunate!" exclaimed Rosalind; 
 "you '11 be all the better able to h.^'p me!"
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 235 
 
 "Yes," I said; "but since things have 
 turned out so oddly, I may say that our rela- 
 tions are of so extremely delicate a nature 
 that I shall have very carefully to think out 
 what is best to be done. Meanwhile, do 
 you mind lending me that ring for a few 
 hours ? " 
 
 It was a large oblong opal set round with 
 small diamonds, — a ring of distinguished 
 design you could hardly help noticing, 
 especially on a man's hand, for which it was 
 too conspicuously dainty. I slipped it on 
 the little finger of my left hand, and, beg- 
 ging Rosalind to remain where she was 
 meanwhile, and to take no steps without 
 consulting me, I mysteriously, not to say 
 officiously, departed. 
 
 I left the twelfth Golden-Haired Bar-maid 
 not too late to stalk her husband and her 
 under-study to their hotel, where they evi- 
 dently proposed to dine. There was, there- 
 fore, nothing left for me but to dine also. 
 So I dined; and when the courses of my 
 dining were ended, I found myself in a 
 mellow twilight at the Caf6 du Ciel. And 
 it was about the hour of the sirens' singing.
 
 236 THE QUEST Ol- 
 
 Presently the little golden butterflies flitted 
 once more through the twilight, and again 
 the woman's voice rose like a silver bird on 
 the air. 
 
 As I have a partiality for her songs, I 
 transcribe this Hyvin of the Daughters of 
 Aphrodite, which you must try to imagine 
 transhgured by her voice and the sunset. 
 
 Queen Aphrodite's 
 
 Daughters are we. 
 She that was born 
 Of the morn 
 
 And the sea; 
 White are our limbs 
 
 As the foam on the wave, 
 Wild are our hymns 
 
 And our lovers are brave ! 
 
 Queen Aphrodite, 
 Born of the sea, 
 Beautiful dutiful daughters 
 Are we I 
 
 You who would follow. 
 
 Fear not to come. 
 For love is for love 
 As dove is for dove ; 
 The harp of Apollo 
 
 Shall lull you to rest, 
 And your head find its home 
 
 On this beautiful breast.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 237 
 
 Queen Aphrodite, 
 Born of the sea, 
 Beautiful dutiful daughters 
 Are we I 
 
 Born of the Ocean, 
 
 Wave-like are we I 
 Rising and falling 
 
 Like waves of the sea; 
 Changing for ever. 
 
 Yet ever the same, 
 Music in motion 
 
 And marble in flame. 
 
 Queen Aphrodite, 
 Born of the sea, 
 Beautiful dutiful daughters 
 Are we ! 
 
 When I alighted once more upon the earth 
 from the heaven of this song, who should I 
 find seated within a table of me but the very 
 couple I was at the moment so unexpectedly 
 interested in ? But they were far too absorbed 
 in each other to notice me, and consequently 
 I was able to hear all of importance that was 
 said. I regret that I cannot gratify the 
 reader with a report of their conversation, 
 for the excuse I had for listening was one 
 that is not transferable. A woman's happi- 
 ness was at stake. No other consideration
 
 238 THE GUEST OF 
 
 could have pcriiiiadcd inc to means so mean 
 save an end so noble. I did n't even tell 
 Rosalind all I heard. Mercifully for her, 
 the candour of fools is not among my super- 
 stitions. Suffice it for all third persons to 
 know — v;hat Rosalind indeed has never 
 known, and what I hope no reader will be 
 fool enough to tell her — that Orlando was for 
 the moment hopelessly and besottedly faith- 
 less to his wife, and that my services had 
 been bespoken in the very narrowest nick of 
 time. 
 
 Having, as the reader has long known, a 
 warm personal interest in his attractive com- 
 panion, and desiring, therefore, to think as 
 well of her as possible, I was pleased to 
 deduce, negatively, from their conversation, 
 that Sylvia Joy knew nothing of Rosalind, 
 and believed Orlando to be a free, that is, an 
 unmarried man. From the point of view, 
 therefore, of her code, there was no earthly 
 reason why she should not fall in with 
 Orlando's proposal that they should leave 
 for Paris by the "Mayflower" on the fol- 
 lowing morning. Orlando, I could hear, 
 wished to make more extended arrangements,
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 239 
 
 and references to that well-known rendez- 
 vous, "Eternity," fell on my ears from time 
 to time. Evidently Sylvia had no very 
 saving belief in Eternity, for I heard her 
 say that they might see how they got on in 
 Paris for a start. Then it would be time 
 enough to talk of Eternity. This and other 
 remarks of Sylvia's considerably predisposed 
 me towards her. Having concluded their 
 arrangements for the heaven of the morrow, 
 they rose to take a stroll along the boule- 
 vards. As they did so, I touched Orlando's 
 shoulder and begged his attention for a mo- 
 ment. Though an entire stranger to him, I 
 had, I said, a matter of extreme importance 
 to communicate to him, and I hoped, there 
 fore, that it would suit his convenience to 
 meet me at the same place in an hour and a 
 half. As I said this, I flashed his wife's ring 
 in the light so obviously that he was com- 
 pelled to notice it. 
 
 " Wherever did you get that ? " he gasped, 
 no little surprised and agitated. 
 
 "From your wife," I answered, rapidly 
 moving away. "Be sure to be here at 
 eleven. "
 
 240 THE QUEST OF 
 
 I slipped away into the crowd, and spent 
 my hour and a half in persuading Rosalind 
 that her husband was no doubt a little infat- 
 uated, but nevertheless the most faithful 
 husband in the world. If she would only 
 leave all to me, by this time to-morrow 
 night, if not a good many hours before, he 
 should be in her arms as safe as in the Bank. 
 It did my heart good to see how happy this 
 artistic adaptation of the truth made her; 
 and I must say that she never had a wiser 
 friend. 
 
 When eleven came, I was back in my seat 
 at the Cafe du Ciel. Orlando too was 
 excitedly punctual. 
 
 " Well, what is it .? " he hurried out, almost 
 before he had sat down. 
 
 "What will you do me the honour of 
 drinking .-•" I asked calmly. 
 
 "Oh, drink be d d!" he said; "what 
 
 have you to tell me? " 
 
 "I'm glad to hear you rap out such a good 
 honest oath," I said; "but I should like a 
 drink, for all that, and if I may say so, you 
 would be none the worse for a brandy and 
 soda, late as it is."
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 241 
 
 When the drinks had come, I remarked to 
 him quietly, but not without significance : 
 "The meaning of this ring is that your wife 
 is here, and very wretched. By an accident 
 I have been privileged with her friendship; 
 and I may say, to save time, that she has 
 told me the whole story. 
 
 "What happily she has not been able to 
 tell me, and what I need hardly say she will 
 never know from me, I overheard, in the 
 interests of your joint happiness, an hour or 
 so ago." 
 
 The man who is telling the story has a 
 proverbial great advantage; but I hope the 
 reader knows enough of me by this to believe 
 that I am far from meanly availing myself 
 of it in this narrative. I am well and grate- 
 fully aware that in this interview with 
 Orlando my advantages were many and 
 fortunate. For example, had he been bigger 
 and older, or had he not been a gentleman, 
 my task had been considerably more arduous, 
 not to say dangerous. 
 
 But, as Rosalind had said, he was really 
 quite a boy, and I confess I was a little 
 ashamed for him, and a little piqued, that 
 
 16
 
 242 THE QUEST OF 
 
 he showed so little fight. The unexpected 
 ness of my attack had, I realised, given me 
 the whip-hand. So I judged, at all events, 
 from the fact that he forbore to bluster, and 
 sat quite still, with his head in his hands, say- 
 ing never a word for what seemed several min- 
 utes. Then presently he said very quietly, — 
 
 " I love my wife all the same." 
 
 "Of course you do," I answered, eagerly 
 welcoming the significant announcement; 
 "and if you '11 allow me to say so, I think I 
 understand more about the whole situation 
 than either of you, bachelor though unfortu- 
 nately I am. As a famous friend of mine is 
 fond of saying, lookers-on see most of the 
 game." 
 
 Then I rapidly told him the history of my 
 meeting with his wife, and depicted, in har- 
 rowing pigments of phrase, the distress of 
 her mind. 
 
 "I love my wife all the same," he repeated, 
 as I finished; "and," he added, "I love 
 Sylvia too." 
 
 "But not quite in the same way.?" I 
 suggested. 
 
 "I love Sylvia very tenderly," he said.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 243 
 
 "Yes, I know; I don't think you could do 
 anything else. No man worth his salt could 
 be anything but tender to a dainty little 
 woman like that. But tenderness, gentle- 
 ness, affection, even self-sacrifice, — these 
 may be parts of love; but they are merely 
 the crude untransformed ingredients of a 
 love such as you feel for your wife, and such 
 fts I know she feels for you." 
 
 "She still loves me, then," he said piti- 
 fully; "she hasn't fallen in love with you." 
 
 "No fear," I answered; "no such luck for 
 me. If she had, I 'm afraid I should hardly 
 have been talking to you as I am at this 
 moment. If a woman like Rosalind, as I 
 call her, gave me her love, it would take 
 more than a husband to rob me of it, I can 
 tell you." 
 
 "Yes," he repeated, "on my soul, I love 
 her. I have never been false to her, in my 
 heart ; but — " 
 
 "I know all about it," I said; "may I 
 tell you how it all was, — diagnose the 
 situation? " 
 
 "Do," he replied; "it is a relief to heai 
 you talk."
 
 244 THE QUEST OF 
 
 "Well," I said, "may I ask on^ rather in- 
 timate question ? Did you ever before you 
 were married sow what are known as wild 
 oats?" 
 
 "Never," he answered indignantly, flash- 
 ing for a moment. 
 
 "Well, you should have done," I said; 
 "that's just the whole trouble. Wild oats 
 will get sown some time, and one of the arts 
 of life is to sow them at the right time, — 
 the younger the better. Think candidly 
 before you answer me." 
 
 " I believe you are right," he replied, after 
 a long pause. 
 
 "You are a believer in theories," I con- 
 tinued, "and so am I; but you can take my 
 word that on these matters not all, but 
 some, of the old theories are best. One of 
 them is that the man who does not sow his 
 wild oats before marriage will sow them 
 afterwards, with a whirlwind for the reaping. " 
 
 Orlando looked up at me, haggard with 
 confession. 
 
 " You know the old story of the ring given 
 to Venus.'' Well, it is the ruin of no few 
 men to meet Venus for the first time on
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 245 
 
 their marriage night. Their very chastity, 
 paradoxical as it may seem, is their destruc- 
 tion. No one can appreciate the peace, the 
 holy satisfaction of monogamy till he has 
 passed through the wasting distractions, the 
 unrest of polygamy. Plunged right away 
 into monogamy, man, unexperienced in his 
 good fortune, hankers after polygamy, as the 
 monotheistic Jew hankered after polytheism ; 
 and thus the monogamic young man too often 
 meets Aphrodite for the first time, and 
 makes future appointments with her, in the 
 arms of his pure young wife. If you have 
 read Swedenborg, you will remember his 
 denunciation of the lust of variety. Now, 
 that is a lust every young man feels, but it 
 is one to be satisfied before marriage. Syl- 
 via Joy has been such a variant for you ; and 
 I 'm afraid you 're going to have some little 
 trouble to get her off your nerves. Tell 
 me frankly," I said, "have you had your fill 
 of Aphrodite .-^ It is no use your going back 
 to your wife till you have had that." 
 
 "I'm not quite a beast," he retorted. 
 " After all, it was an experiment we both 
 agreed to try."
 
 246 THE QUEST OF 
 
 "Certainly," I answered, "and I hope it 
 may have the result of persuading you of the 
 unwisdom of experimenting with happiness. 
 You have the realities of happiness; why 
 should you trouble about its theories? They 
 are for unhappy people, like me, who must 
 learn to distil by learned patience the auruni 
 potabile from the husks of life, the peace 
 which happier mortals find lying like manna 
 each morn upon the meadows." 
 
 "Well," I continued, "enough of the 
 abstract; let us have another drink, and tell 
 me what you propose to do." 
 
 " Poor Sylvia ! " sighed Orlando. 
 
 "Shall I tell you about Sylvia.?" I said. 
 "On second thoughts, I won't. It would 
 hardly be fair play; but this, I may say, 
 relying on your honour, that if you were to 
 come to my hotel, I could show you indis- 
 putable proof that I know at least as much 
 about Sylvia Joy as even such a privileged 
 intimate as yourself." 
 
 "It is strange, then, that she never rec- 
 ognised you just now," he retorted, with 
 forlorn alertness. 
 
 "Of course she did n't. How young you
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 247 
 
 are! It is rather too bad of a woman of 
 Sylvia's experience." 
 
 "And I've bought our passages for to- 
 morrow. I cannot let her go without some 
 sort of good-bye." 
 
 " Give the tickets to me. I can make 
 use of them. How much are they? Let 's 
 see." 
 
 The calculation made and the money 
 passed across, I said abruptly, — 
 
 " Now supposing we go and see your 
 wife." 
 
 "You have saved my life," he said 
 hoarsely, pressing my hand as we rose. 
 
 " I don't know about that," I said inwardly; 
 "but I do hope I have saved your wife." 
 As I thought of that, a fear occurred to me. 
 " Look here," I said, as we strolled towards 
 the Twelve Golden-Haired, " I hope you 
 have no silly notions about confession, 
 about telling the literal truth and so on. 
 Because I want you to promise me that you 
 will lie stoutly to your wife about Sylvia 
 Joy. You must swear the whole thing has 
 been platonic. It 's the only chance for 
 your happiness. Your wife, no doubt, will
 
 248 THE QUEST OF 
 
 lure you on to confession by saying that she 
 docs n't mind this, that, and the other, so 
 long as you don't keep it from her; and no 
 doubt she will mean it till you have con- 
 fessed. But, however good their theories, 
 women by nature cannot help confusing body 
 and soul, and what to a man is a mere fancy 
 of the senses, to them is a spiritual tragedy. 
 Promise me to lie stoutly on this point. 
 It is, I repeat, the only chance for your 
 future happiness. As has been wisely said, 
 a lie in time saves nine; and such a lie as I 
 advise is but one of the higher forms of 
 truth. Such lying, indeed, is the art of 
 telling the truth. The truth is that you 
 love her body, soul, and spirit; any acci- 
 dental matter which should tend to make 
 her doubt that would be the only real lie. 
 Promise me, won't you.^" 
 
 "Yes, I will lie," said Orlando. 
 
 "Well, there she is," I said; "and God 
 bless you both."
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 249 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 IN WHICH ONCE MORE I BECOME OCCUPIED 
 IN MY OWN AFFAIRS 
 
 During a pause in my matrimonial lecture, 
 Orlando had written a little farewell note to 
 Sylvia, — a note which, of course, I did n't 
 read, but which it is easy to imagine "wild 
 with all regret." This I undertook to have 
 delivered to her the same night, and promised 
 to call upon her on the morrow, further to 
 illuminate the situation, and to offer her 
 every consolation in my power. To con- 
 clude the history of Orlando and his Rosa- 
 lind, 1 may say that I saw them off from 
 Yellowsands by the early morning coach. 
 There was a soft brightness in their faces, 
 as though rain had fallen in the night ; but 
 it was the warm sweet rain of joy that brings 
 the flowers, and is but sister to the sun. 
 They are, at the time of my writing, quite
 
 250 THE QUI' ST OF 
 
 old friends of mine, and both have an exces 
 sive opinion of my wisdom and good-nature. 
 
 "That lie," Orlando once said to me long 
 after, "was the truest thing I ever said in 
 my life," — a remark which may not give the 
 reader a very exalted idea of his general 
 veracity. 
 
 As the coach left long before pretty young 
 actresses even dreamed of getting up, I had 
 to control my impatient desire to call on 
 Mademoiselle Sylvia Joy till it was fully 
 noon. And even then she was not to be 
 seen. I tried again in the afternoon with 
 better success. 
 
 Rain had been falling in the night with 
 her too, I surmised, but it had failed to dim 
 her gay eyes, and had left her complexion 
 unimpaired. Of course her little affair with 
 Orlando had never been very serious on her 
 side. She genuinely liked him. " He was 
 a nice kind boy," was the height of her pas- 
 sionate expression, and she was, naturally, a 
 little disappointed at having an affectionate 
 companion thus unexpectedly whisked off 
 into space. Her only approach to anger was 
 on the subject of his deceiving her about
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 251 
 
 his wife. Little Sylvia Joy had no very 
 long string of principles; but one generous 
 principle she did hold by, — never, if she 
 knew it, to rob another woman of her hus- 
 band. And that did make her cross with 
 Orlando. He had not played the game fair. 
 
 There is no need to follow, step by step, 
 the progression by which Sylvia Joy and I, 
 though such new acquaintances, became in 
 the course of a day or two even more inti- 
 mate than many old friends. We took to 
 each other instinctively, even on our first 
 rather difficult interview, and very gently 
 and imperceptibly I bid for the vacant place 
 in her heart. 
 
 That night we dined together. 
 
 The next day we lunched and dined 
 together. 
 
 The next day we breakfasted, lunched, 
 and dined together. 
 
 And on the next I determined to venture 
 on the confession which, as you may imagine, 
 it had needed no little artistic control not to 
 make on our first meeting. 
 
 She looked particularly charming this 
 evening, in a black silk gown, exceedingly
 
 252 THE QUF.ST OT 
 
 simple and distinguished in style, throwing 
 up the lovely firm whiteness of her throat 
 and bosom, and making a fine contrast with 
 her lurid hair. 
 
 It was sheer delight to sit opposite her 
 m dinner, and quietly watch her without a 
 word. Shall I confess that I had an exceed- 
 ingly boyish vanity in thus being granted 
 her friendship? It is almost too boyish to 
 confess at my time of life. It was simply in 
 the fact that she was an actress, — a real, 
 live, famous actress, whose photographs 
 made shop windows beautiful, — come right 
 out of my boy's fairyland of the theatre, 
 actually to sit eating and drinking, quite in 
 a real way, at my side. This, no doubt, 
 will seem pathetically naive to most mod- 
 ern young men, who in this respect begin 
 where I leave off. An actress! Great 
 heavens ! an actress is the first step to a 
 knowledge of life. Besides, actresses off the 
 stage are either brainless or soulful, and the 
 choice of evils is a delicate one. Well, I 
 have never set up for a man of the world, 
 though sometimes when I have heard the 
 Lovelaces of the day hinting mysteriously at
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 253 
 
 their secret sins or boasting of their florid 
 gallantries, I have remembered the last 
 verse of Suckling's "Ballad of a Wedding," 
 which, no doubt, the reader knows as well 
 as I, and if not, it will increase his acquaint- 
 ance with our brave old poetry to look it up. 
 
 "You are very beautiful to-night," I said, 
 in one of the meditative pauses between the 
 courses. 
 
 "Thank you, kind sir," she said, making 
 a mock courtesy; "but the compliment is 
 made a little anxious for me by your evi« 
 dent implication that I didn't look so beau- 
 tiful this morning. You laid such a marked 
 emphasis on to-night." 
 
 "Nay," I returned, "'for day and night 
 are both alike to thee. ' I think you would 
 even be beautiful — well, I cannot imagine 
 any moment or station of life you would not 
 beautify. " 
 
 " I must get you to write that down, and 
 then I '11 have it framed. It would cheer 
 me of a morning when I curl my hair," 
 laughed Sylvia. 
 
 "But you are beautiful," I continued, 
 becoming quite impassioned.
 
 254 THE QUEST OF 
 
 "Yes, and as good as T 'ni beautiful." 
 
 And she was too, though perhaps the 
 beauty occasionally predominated. 
 
 When the serious business of dining was 
 dispatched, and we were trifling with our 
 coffee and liqueurs, my eyes, which of 
 course had seldom left her during the whole 
 meal, once more enfolded her little ivory 
 and black silk body with an embrace as real 
 as though they had been straining passionate 
 arms; and as I thus nursed her in my eyes, 
 I smiled involuntarily at a thought which 
 not unnaturally occurred to me. 
 
 "What is that sly smile about?" she 
 asked. Now I had smiled to think that 
 underneath that stately silk, around that 
 tight little waist, was a dainty waistband 
 bearing the legend "Sylvia Joy," No. 4, 
 perhaps, or 5, but tiot No. 6; and a whole 
 wonderful underworld of lace and linen and 
 silk stockings, the counterpart of which 
 wonders, my clairvoyant fancy laughed to 
 think, were at the moment — so entirely 
 unsuspected of their original owner — my 
 delicious possessions. 
 
 Everything a woman wears or touches
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 255 
 
 immediately incarnates something of her- 
 self. A handkerchief, a glove, a flower, — 
 with a breath she endues them with immortal 
 souls. How much, therefore, of herself 
 must inhere in a garment so confidential as 
 a petticoat, or so close and constant a com- 
 panion as a stocking ! 
 
 Now that I knew Sylvia Joy, I realised 
 how absolutely true my instinct had been, 
 when on that far afternoon in that Surrey 
 garden I had said, "With such a petticoat 
 and such a name, Sylvia herself cannot be 
 otherwise than charming." 
 
 Indeed, now I could see that the petticoat 
 was nothing short of a portrait of her, and 
 that any one learned in the physiognomy of 
 clothes would have been able to pick Sylvia 
 out of a thousand by that spirited, spoilt, 
 and petted garment. 
 
 "What is that sly smile about.?" she 
 repeated presently. 
 
 " I only chanced to think of an absurd 
 little fairy story I read the other day," I 
 said, "which is quite irrelevant at the mo- 
 ment. You know the idle way things com© 
 and go through one's head."
 
 256 THE QUEST OF 
 
 "I don't believe you," she rcplicfl, "but 
 tell mc the story. I love fairy tales." 
 
 "Certainly," I said, for I was n't likely to 
 get a better opportunity. " There 's nothing 
 much in it; it's merely a variation of Cin- 
 derella's slipper. Well, once upon a time 
 there was an eccentric young prince who *d 
 had his fling in his day, but had arrived at the 
 lonely age of thirty without having met a 
 woman whom he could love enough to make 
 his wife. He was a rather fanciful young 
 prince, accustomed to follow his whims; and 
 one day, being more than usually bored with 
 existence, he took it into his head to ramble 
 incognito through his kingdom in search of 
 his ideal wife, — ' The Golden Girl,' as he 
 called her. He had hardly set out when in 
 a country lane he came across a peasant 
 girl hanging out clothes to dry, and he fell 
 to talk with her while she went on with her 
 charming occupation. Presently he observed, 
 pegged on the line, strangely incongruous 
 among the other homespun garments, a won- 
 derful petticoat, so exquisite in material and 
 design that it aroused his curiosity. At the 
 same moment he noticed a pair of stockings.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 257 
 
 round the tops of which one of the daintiest 
 artists in the land had wrought an exquisite 
 little frieze. The prince was learned in 
 every form of art, and had not failed to study 
 this among other forms of decoration. No 
 sooner did he see this petticoat than the 
 whim seized him that he would find and 
 marry the wearer, whoever she might 
 be — " 
 
 "Rather rash of him," interrupted Sylvia, 
 "for it is usually old ladies who have the 
 prettiest petticoats. They can best afford 
 them — " 
 
 " He questioned the girl as to their 
 owner," I continued, "and after vainly 
 pretending that they were her own, she 
 confessed that they had belonged to a young 
 and beautiful lady who had once lodged there 
 and left them behind. Then the prince gave 
 her a purse of gold in exchange for the 
 finery, and on the waistband of the petticoat 
 he read a beautiful name, and he said, ' This 
 and no other shall be my wife, this unknown 
 beautiful woman, and on our marriage night 
 she shall wear this petticoat. ' And then the 
 piince went forth seeking — " 
 
 17
 
 258 THE QUEST OF 
 
 "There's not much point in it," inter' 
 rupted Sylvia. 
 
 "No," I said. "I 'm afraid I 've stupidly 
 missed the point." 
 
 " Why, what was it ? " 
 
 " The name upon the petticoat ! " 
 
 "Why, what name was it?" she asked, 
 somewhat mystified. 
 
 "The inscription upon the petticoat was, 
 to be quite accurate, ' Sylvia Joy, No. 6. ' " 
 
 "Whatever are you talking about .^" she 
 said with quite a stormy blush. "I'm 
 afraid you 've had more than your share of 
 the champagne." 
 
 As I finished, I slipped out of my pocket 
 a dainty little parcel softly folded in white 
 tissue paper. Very softly I placed it on the 
 table. It contained one of the precious 
 stockings; and half opening it, I revealed to 
 Sylvia's astonished eyes the cunning little 
 frieze of Bacchus and Ariadne, followed by 
 a troop of Satyrs and Bacchantes, which the 
 artist had designed to encircle one of the 
 white columns of that little marble temple 
 which sat before me. 
 
 "You know," I said, "how in fairy tales,
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 259 
 
 when the wandering hero or the maiden in 
 distress has a guiding dream, the dream 
 often leaves something behind on the pillow 
 to assure them of its authenticity. ' When 
 you wake up,' the dream will say, ' you will 
 find a rose or an oak-leaf or an eagle's 
 feather, or whatever it may be, on your 
 pillow.' Well, I have brought this stock- 
 ing — for which, if I might but use them, I 
 have at the moment a stock of the most 
 appropriately endearing adjectives — for the 
 same purpose. By this token you will know 
 that the fairy tale I have been telling you is 
 true, and to-morrow, if you will, you shall 
 see your autograph petticoat." 
 
 "Why, wherever did you come across 
 them ? And what a mad creature you must 
 be ! and what an odd thing that you should 
 really meet me, after all ! " exclaimed Sylvia, 
 all in a breath. "Of course, I remember," 
 she said frankly, and with a shade of 
 sadness passing over her face. "I was 
 spending a holiday with Jack Wentworth, — 
 why, it must be nearly two years ago. Poor 
 Jack! he was killed in the Soudan," and 
 poor Jack could have wished no prettier
 
 26o 
 
 THE QUEST OF 
 
 resurrection than the look of tender memory 
 that came into her face as she spoke of him, 
 and the soft baby tears filled her eyes. 
 
 "I'm so sorry," I said. "Of course I 
 did n't know. Let 's come for a little stroll. 
 There seems to be a lovely moon." 
 
 "Of course you didn't, she said, patting 
 my cheek with a kind little hand. "Yes, 
 do let us go for a stroll."
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 261 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 "the hour for which the years 
 
 DID SIGH " 
 
 This unexpected awakening of an old tender< 
 ness naturally prevented my speaking any 
 more of my mind to Sylvia that evening. 
 No doubt the reader may be a little aston- 
 ished to hear that I had decided to offer her 
 marriage, — not taking my serious view of 
 a fanciful vow. Doubtless Sylvia was not 
 entirely suitable to me, and to marry her 
 was to be faithless to that vision of the 
 highest, that wonderful unknown woman of 
 the apocalyptic moorland, whose face Sylvia 
 had not even momentarily banished from my 
 dreams, and whom, with an unaccountable 
 certitude, I still believed to be the woman 
 God had destined for me; but, all things 
 considered, Sylvia was surely as pretty an
 
 262 THE QUEST OF 
 
 answer to prayer as a man could reasonably 
 hope for. Many historic vows had met with 
 sadly less lucky fulfilment. 
 
 So, after dinner the following evening, I 
 suggested that we should for once take a 
 little walk up along the river-side ; and when 
 we were quiet in the moonlight, dappling 
 the lovers' path we were treading, and mak- 
 ing sharp contrasts of ink and silver down 
 in the river-bed, — I spoke. 
 
 " Sylvia," I said, plagiarising a dream which 
 will be found in Chapter IV., — "Sylvia,! 
 have sought you through the world and 
 found you at last; and with your gracious 
 permission, having found you, I mean to stick 
 to you." 
 
 "What do you mean, silly boy?" she 
 said, as an irregularity in the road threw 
 her soft weight the more fondly upon my 
 arm. 
 
 " I mean, dear, that I want you to be my 
 wife." 
 
 "Your wife? Not for worlds! — no, for- 
 give me, I did n't mean that. You 're an 
 awful dear boy, and I like you very much, 
 and I think you 're rather fond of me ; but —
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 263 
 
 well, the truth is, I was never meant to be 
 married, and don't care about it — and when 
 you think of it, why should I? " 
 
 "You mean," I said, "that you are for- 
 tunate in living in a society where, as in 
 heaven, there is neither marrying nor giving 
 in marriage, where in fact nobody minds 
 whether you 're married or not, and where 
 morals are very properly regarded as a per- 
 sonal and private matter — " 
 
 "Yes, that's what I mean," said Sylvia; 
 " the people I care about — dear good 
 people — will think no more of me for having 
 a wedding-ring, and no less for my being with- 
 out ; and why should one put a yoke round 
 one's neck when nobody expects it? A 
 wedding-ring is like a top-hat, — you only 
 wear it when you must — But it's very sweet 
 of you, all the same, and you can kiss me if 
 you like. Here 's a nice sentimental patch 
 of moonlight." 
 
 I really felt very dejected at this not of 
 course entirely unexpected rejection, — if one 
 might use the word for a situation on which 
 had just been set the seal of so unmistakable 
 a kiss; but the vision in my heart seemed to
 
 264 THE QUEST OF 
 
 smile at me in high and happy triumph. To 
 have won Sylvia would have been to have 
 lost her. My ideal had, as it were, held her 
 breath till Sylvia answered ; now she breathed 
 again. 
 
 " At all events, we can go on being chums, 
 can't we? " I said. 
 
 For answer Sylvia hummed the first verse 
 of that famous song writ by Kit Marlowe. 
 
 " Yes ! " she said presently. " I will sing 
 for you, dance for you, and — perhaps — flirt 
 with you ; but marry you — no ! it 's best not, 
 for both of us." 
 
 "Well, then," I said, " dance for me ! You 
 owe me some amends for an aching heart." 
 As I said this, the path suddenly broadened 
 into a little circular glade into which the 
 moonlight poured in a silver flood. In the 
 centre of the space was a boulder some three 
 or four feet high, and with a flat slab-like 
 surface of some six feet or so. 
 
 " I declare I will," said Sylvia, giving me 
 an impulsive kiss, and springing on to the 
 stone ; " why, here is a ready-made stage." 
 
 " And there," I said, " are the nightingale 
 and the nightjar for orchestra."
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 265 
 
 " And there is the moon," said she, " for 
 lime-light man." 
 
 "Yes," I said; "and here is a handful oi 
 glow-worms for the footlights," 
 
 Then lifting up her heavy silk skirt about 
 her, and revealing a paradise of chiffons, 
 Sylvia swayed for a moment with her face 
 full in the moon, and then slowly glided into 
 the movements of a mystical dance. 
 
 It was thus the fountains were dancing to 
 the moon in Arabia; it was thus the Nixies 
 shook their white limbs on the haunted 
 banks of the Rhine ; it was thus the fairy 
 women flashed their alabaster feet on the 
 fairy hills of Connemara ; it was thus the 
 Houris were dancing for Mahomet on the 
 palace floors of Paradise. 
 
 " It was over such dancing," I said, " that 
 John the Baptist lost his head." 
 
 " Give me a kiss," she said, nestling ex- 
 hausted in my arms. " I always want some 
 one to kiss when I have danced with my sou] 
 as well as my body." 
 
 " I think we always do," I said, " when 
 we've done anything that seems wonderful, 
 that gives us the thrill of really doing — "
 
 266 THE QUEST OF 
 
 " And a poor excuse is better than none, 
 isn't it, dear?" said Sylvia, her face full in 
 the cataract of the moonlight. 
 
 As a conclusion for this chapter I will 
 copy out a little song which I extemporised 
 for Sylvia on our way home to Yellowsands — 
 too artlessly happy, it will be observed, to 
 rhyme correctly: — 
 
 Sylvia 's dancing 'neath the moon. 
 
 Like a star in water ; 
 Sylvia 's dancing to a tune 
 
 Fairy folk have taught her. 
 
 Glow-worms light her little feet 
 
 In her fairy theatre ; 
 Oh, but Sylvia is sweet 1 
 
 Tell me who is sweeter !
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 267 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 AT THE CAFE DE LA PAIX 
 
 As love-making in which we have no share is 
 apt to be either tantalising or monotonous, I 
 propose to skip the next fortnight and intro- 
 duce myself to the reader at a moment when I 
 am once more alone. It is about six o'clock on 
 a summer afternoon, I am in Paris, and seated 
 at one of the little marble tables of the Caf6 
 de la Paix, dreamily watching the glittering 
 tide of gay folk passing by, — 
 
 "AH happy people on their way 
 To make a golden end of day." 
 
 Meditatively I smoke a cigarette and sip a 
 pale greenish liquor smelling strongly of ani- 
 seed, which is n't half so interesting as a com- 
 monplace whiskey and soda, but which, I am 
 told, has the recommendation of being ten 
 times as wicked. I sip it with a delicious thrill 
 of degeneration, as though I were Eve tasting 
 the apple for the first time, — for " such a
 
 268 Till-: QUE SI OF 
 
 power hath white siniph'city." Sin is for the 
 innocent, — a truth which sinners will be the 
 first to regret. It was so, I said to myself, 
 Alfred de Musset used to sit and sip his 
 absinthe before a fascinated world. It is a 
 privilege for the world to look on greatness 
 at any moment, even when it is drinking. 
 So I sat, and privileged the world. 
 
 It will readily be surmised from this exor- 
 dium that — incredible as it may seem in a 
 man of thirty — this was my first visit to Paris. 
 Vou may remember that I had bought Or- 
 lando's tickets, and it had occurred to Sylvia 
 aud me to use them. Sylvia was due in 
 London to fulfil a dancing engagement within 
 a fortnight after our arrival ; so after a tender 
 good-bye, which there was no earthly neces- 
 sity to make final, I had remained behind for 
 the purposes of study. Though, logically, 
 my pilgrimage had ended with the unex- 
 pected discovery of Sylvia Joy, yet there were 
 two famous feminine types of which, seeing 
 that I was in Paris, I thought I might as well 
 make brief studies, before I returned to Lon- 
 don and finally resumed the bachelorhood 
 from which I had started. These were the gri-
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 269 
 
 sette of fiction and the American girl of fact. 
 Pending these investigations, I meditated on 
 the great city in the midst of which I sat. 
 
 A city ! How much more it was than that ! 
 Was it not the most portentous symbol of 
 modern history? Think what the word 
 '• Paris " means to the emancipated intellect, 
 to the political government, to the humanised 
 morals, of the world; not to speak of the 
 romance of its literature, the tradition of its 
 manners, and the immortal fame of its women. 
 France is the brain of the world, as England 
 is its heart, and Russia its fist. Strange is 
 the power, strange are the freaks and re- 
 venges, of association, particularly perhaps 
 of literary association. Here pompous offi- 
 cial representatives may demur ; but who can 
 doubt that it is on its literature that a country 
 must rely for its permanent representation? 
 The countries that are forgotten, or are of no 
 importance in the councils of the world, are 
 countries without literature. Greece and 
 Rome are more real in print than ever they 
 were in marble. Though, as we know, proph- 
 ets are not without honour save in their 
 own countries and among their own kindred,
 
 270 THE QU KST OF 
 
 the time comes when their countries and kin- 
 dred arc entirely without honour save by 
 reason of those very prophets they once 
 despised, rejected, stoned, and crucified. 
 Subtract its great men from a nation, and 
 where is its greatness? 
 
 Similarly, everything, however trifling, that 
 has been written about , so long as it has 
 been written about sufficiently well, becomes 
 relatively enduring and representative of the 
 country in which it is found. To an Ameri- 
 can, for example, the significance of a sky- 
 lark is that Shelley sang it to skies where 
 even it could never have mounted ; and any 
 one who has heard the nightingale must, if 
 he be open-minded, confess its tremendous 
 debt to Keats: a tenth part genuine song, the 
 rest moon, stars, silence, and John Keats, — 
 such is the nightingale. The real truth about 
 a country will never be known till every rep- 
 resentative type and condition in it have found 
 their inspired literary mouthpiece. Mean- 
 while one country takes its opinion of another 
 from the aperqus of a few brilliant but often ir- 
 responsible or prejudiced writers, — and really 
 it is rather in what those writers leave out
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 271 
 
 than in what they put in that one must seek 
 the more reliable data of national cnaracter. 
 
 A quaint example of association occurs to 
 me from the experience of a friend of mine, 
 " rich enough to lend to the poor." Having 
 met an American friend newly landed at 
 Liverpool, and a hurried quarter of an hour 
 being all that was available for lunch, " Come 
 let us have a pork-pie and a bottle of Bass " 
 he had suggested. 
 
 " Pork-pies ! " said the American, with a 
 delighted sense of discovering the country, — 
 "why, you read about them in Dickens!" 
 Who shall say but that this instinctive asso- 
 ciation was an involuntary severe, but not 
 inapplicable, criticism ? A nightingale sug- 
 gests Keats; a pork-pie, Dickens. 
 
 Similarly with absinthe, grisettes, the 
 Latin Quarter, and so on. Why, you read 
 about them in Murger, in Musset, in Balzac, 
 and in Flaubert ; and the fact of your having 
 read about them is, I may add, their chief 
 importance. 
 
 So rambled my after-dinner reflections as 
 I sat that evening smoking and sipping, 
 sipping and smoking, at the Caf^ de la Paix.
 
 272 THE QUEST OF 
 
 Presently in my dream I became aware of 
 English voices near me, one of which seemed 
 familiar, and which I could n't help over- 
 hearing. The voice of the husband said, — 
 you can never mistake the voice of the 
 husband, — 
 
 'T was the voice of the husband, 
 I heard him complain, — 
 
 the voice of the husband said : " Dora, I for- 
 bid you ! I will not allow my wife to be 
 seen again in the Latin Quarter. I per- 
 mitted you to go once, as a concession, to 
 the Caf6 d'Harcourt; but once is enough. 
 You will please respect my wishes!" 
 
 "But," pleaded the dear little woman, 
 whom I had an immediate impulse, Perseus- 
 like, to snatch from the jaws of her monster, 
 and turning to the other lady of the party of 
 
 four, — "but Mrs. has never been, and 
 
 she cannot well go without a chaperone. 
 Surely it cannot matter for once. It is n't 
 as if I were there constantly." 
 
 " No ! " said the husband, with the absurd 
 pomposity of his tribe. " I 'm very sorry. 
 
 Mrs. will, of course, act as she pleases; 
 
 but I cannot allow you to do it, Dora."
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 273 
 
 At last the little wife showed some spirit. 
 
 "Don't talk to me like that, Will," she 
 said. " I shall go if I please. Surely I am 
 my own property." 
 
 "Not at all!" at once flashed out the 
 husband, wounded in that most vital part 
 of him, his sense of property. " There you 
 mistake. You are my property, my chattel ; 
 you promised obedience to me; I bought 
 you, and you do my bidding!" 
 
 "Great heavens!" I ejaculated, and, 
 springing up, found myself face to face with 
 a well-known painter whom you would have 
 thought the most Bohemian fellow in Lon- 
 don. And Bohemian he is; but Bohemians 
 are seldom Bohemians for any one save 
 themselves. They are terrible sticklers 
 for convention and even etiquette in other 
 people. 
 
 We recognised each other with a laugh, 
 and presently were at it, hammer and tongs. 
 I may say that we were all fairly intimate 
 friends, and thus had the advantage of entire 
 liberty of speech. I looked daggers at the 
 husband; he looked daggers at me, and 
 occasionally looking at his wife, gave her 7 
 
 18
 
 274 THE QUEST OF 
 
 glance which was like the opening of Blue- 
 beard's closet. You could see the poor mur- 
 dered bodies dangling within the shadowy 
 cupboard of his eye. Of course we got no 
 further. Additional opj)osition but further 
 enraged him. Ho recapitulated what he 
 would no doubt call his arguments, — they 
 sounded more like threats, — and as he .spoke 
 I saw dragons fighting for their dams in the 
 primeval ooze, and heard savage trumpetings 
 of masculine monsters without a name. 
 
 I told him so. 
 
 " You are, " I said, — " and you will forgive 
 my directness of expression, — you are the 
 Primeval Male ! You are the direct descend- 
 ant of those Romans who carried off the 
 Sabine women. Nay ! you have a much 
 longer genealogy. You come of those hairy 
 anthropoid males who hunted their mates 
 through the tangle of primeval forests, and 
 who finally obtained their consent — shall wc 
 say.^ — by clubbing them on the head with a 
 stone axe. You talk a great deal of non- 
 sense about the New Woman, but you, 
 Sir, are The Old Male ; and," I continued, 
 ** I have only to obtain your wife's con-
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 275 
 
 sent to take her under my protection this 
 instant." 
 
 Curiously enough, "The Old Male," as 
 he is now affectionately called, became from 
 this moment quite a bosom friend. Noth- 
 ing would satisfy us but that we should all 
 lodge at the same/^;wzW/ together, and there 
 many a day we fought our battles over again. 
 But that poor little wife never, to my knowl- 
 edge, went to the Cafe d'Harcourt again.
 
 n6 THE QUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER XHI 
 
 THE INNOCENCE OF PARIS 
 
 This meeting with William and Dora was 
 fortunate from the point of view of my 
 studies; for that very night, as I dined with 
 them en pension, I found that providence, 
 with his usual foresight, had placed me next 
 to a very charming American girl of the 
 type that I was particularly wishful to study. 
 She seemed equally wishful to be studied, 
 and we got on amazingly from the first 
 moment of our acquaintance. By the 
 middle of dinner we were pressing each 
 other's feet under the table, and when coffee 
 and cigarettes had come, we were affianced 
 lovers. "Why should I blush to own I 
 love?" was evidently my quaint little com- 
 panion's motto; and indeed she did n't blush 
 to own it to the whole table, and publicly 
 to announce that I was the dearest boy, and 
 absolutely the most lovable man she had
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 2^^ 
 
 met. There was nothing she would n't do 
 for me. Would she brave the terrors of the 
 Latin Quarter with me, I asked, and intro- 
 duc , me to the terrible Cafe d'Harcourt, 
 about which William and Dora had suffered 
 such searchings of heart 'i " Why, certainly ; 
 there was nothing in that," she said. So 
 we went. 
 
 Nothing is more absurd and unjust than 
 those crude labels of national character 
 which label one country virtuous and another 
 vicious, one musical and another literary. 
 Thus France has an unjust reputation for 
 vice, and England an equally unjust reputa- 
 tion for virtue. 
 
 I had always, I confess, been brought up 
 to think of Paris as a sort of Sodom and 
 Gomorrah in one. Good Americans might 
 go to Paris, according to the American 
 theory of a future state ; but, certainly I had 
 thought, no good Englishman ever went 
 there — except, maybe, on behalf of the Vigi- 
 lance Society. Well, it may sound an odd 
 thing to say, but what impressed me most 
 of all was the absolute innocence of the 
 place.
 
 278 THE QUEST OF 
 
 I mean this quite seriously. Per surely 
 one important condition of innocence is 
 unconsciousness of doing wrong. The poor 
 despised Parisian may bo a very wicked and 
 depraved person, but certainly he goes about 
 with an absolute unconsciousness of it upon 
 his gay and kindly countenance. 
 
 "Seeing the world" usually means seeing 
 everything in it that most decent people 
 won't look at; but when you come to look 
 at these terrible things and places, what do 
 you find .^ Why, absolute disappointment! 
 
 Have you ever read that most amusing 
 book, " Baedeker on Paris " ? I know noth- 
 ing more delightful than the notes to the 
 Montmartre and Latin Quarters. The places 
 to which you, as a smug Briton, may or 
 may not take a lady! The scale of wick- 
 edness allowed to the waxwork British lady 
 is most charmingly graduated. I had read 
 that the cafe where we were sitting was one 
 of the most terrible places in Paris, — the 
 Caf^ d'Harcourt, where the students of the 
 Latin Quarter take their nice little domestic 
 mistresses to supper. But Baedeker was 
 dreadfully Pecksniffian about these poor
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 279 
 
 innocent /tudiantes, many of whom love 
 their lovers much more truly than many a 
 British wife loves her husband, and are 
 much better loved in return. If you doubt 
 it, dare to pay attention to one of these 
 young ladies, and you will probably have to 
 fight a duel for it. In fact, these romantic 
 relations are much more careful of honour 
 than conventional ones; for love, and not 
 merely law, keeps guard. 
 
 I looked around me. Where were those 
 terrible things I had read of.^ Where was 
 this hell which I had reasonably expected 
 would gape leagues of sulphur and blue 
 flame beneath the little marble table .^ I 
 mentally resolved to bring an action against 
 Baedeker for false information. For what 
 did I see? Simply pairs and groups of 
 young men and women chattering amiably 
 in front of their "bocks" or their "Ameri- 
 cains." Here and there a student would 
 have his arm round a waist every one else 
 envied him. One student was prettily try- 
 ing a pair of new gloves upon his little 
 woman's hand. Here and there blithe songs 
 would spring up, from sheer gladness of
 
 28o THE QUEST OF 
 
 heart; and never was such a buzz of happy 
 young people, not even at a Sunday-school 
 treat. To me it seemed absolutely Arcadian, 
 and I thought of Daphnis and Chloc and the 
 early world. Nothing indecorous or gross; 
 all perfectly pretty and seemly. 
 
 On our way home Semiramis was so sweet 
 to me, in her innocent, artless frankness, 
 that I went to bed with an intoxicating feel- 
 ing that I must be irresistible indeed, to 
 have so completely conquered so true a 
 heart in so few hours. I was the more flat- 
 tered because I am not a vain man, and am 
 not, like some, accustomed to take hearts as 
 the Israelites took Jericho with the blast of 
 one's own trumpet. 
 
 But, alas ! my dream of universal irresisti- 
 bility was but short-lived, for next after- 
 noon, as William and I sat out at some cafe 
 together, I found myself the object of chaff. 
 
 "Well," said William, "how goes the 
 love-affair.^ " 
 
 I flushed somewhat indignantly at his 
 manner with sanctities. 
 
 "I see!" he said, "I see! You are 
 already corded and labelled, and will be
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 281 
 
 shipped over by the next mail, — ' To Miss 
 Semiramis Wilcox, 100 1 99th St., Philadel- 
 phia, U. S. A. Man xvitJi care. ' Well, I 
 did think you 'd got an eye in your head. 
 Look here, don't be a fool! I suppose she 
 said you were the first and last. The last 
 you certainly were. There are limits even 
 to the speed of American girls; but the 
 first, my boy ! You are more like the twelfth, 
 to my ocular knowledge. Here comes 
 Dubois the poet. He can tell you some- 
 thing about Miss Semiramis. Eh! Dubois, 
 you know Miss Semiramis Wilcox, don't 
 you?" 
 
 The Frenchman smiled and shrugged. 
 
 "Un peu," he said. 
 
 "Don't be an ass and get angry," William 
 continued ; " it 's all for your own good." 
 
 "The little Semiramis has been seducing 
 my susceptible friend here. Like many of 
 us, he has been captivated by her naturalness, 
 her naifvete, her clear good eyes, — that look 
 of nature that is always art ! May I relate 
 the idyl of your tragic passion, dear Dubois, 
 as an object lesson ? " 
 
 The Frenchman bowed, and signed William 
 to proceed.
 
 382 TIIF. QUEST OF 
 
 "You dined with us one evening, and 
 you thus met for the first time. You sat 
 together at table. What happened with the 
 fish?" 
 
 " She swore I was the most beautiful man 
 she had ever seen, — and I am not beautiful, 
 as you perceive." 
 
 If not beautiful, the poet was certainly true. 
 
 " What happened at the entrt^e? " 
 
 " Oh, long before that we were pressing our 
 feet under the table." 
 
 " And the coffee — " 
 
 " Mon Dieu ! we were Tristram and Yseult, 
 we were all the great lovers in the Pantheon 
 of love." 
 
 "And what then?" 
 
 " Oh, we went to the Caf6 d'Harcourt — mon 
 ami." 
 
 " Did she wear a veil? " I asked. 
 
 " Oui, certainement ! " 
 
 " And did you say, * Why do you wear a 
 veil, — setting a black cloud before the eyes 
 and gates of heaven ' ? " 
 
 " The very words," said the Frenchman. 
 
 " And did she say, * Yes, but the veil can 
 be raised?' "
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 283 
 
 " She did, mon pauvre ami," said the poet 
 
 "And did you raise it?" 
 
 " I did," said the poet. 
 
 "And so did I," I answered. And as I 
 spoke, there was a crash of white marble in 
 my soul, and lo ! Love had fallen from his 
 pedestal and been broken into a thousand 
 pieces, — a heavy, dead thing he lay upon 
 the threshold of my heart. 
 
 We had appointed a secret meeting in the 
 salon of the pension that afternoon. I was 
 not there ! (Nor, as I afterwards learnt, 
 was Semiramis.) When we did meet, I 
 was brutally cold. I evaded all lier moves ; 
 but when at last I decided to give her a 
 hearing, I confess it needed all my cynicism 
 to resist her air of innocence, of pathetic 
 devotion. 
 
 If I could n't love her, she said, might she 
 go on loving me? Might she write to me 
 sometimes? She would be content if now 
 and again I would send her a little word. 
 Perhaps in time I would grow to believe in 
 her love, etc. 
 
 The heart-broken abandonment with which 
 she said this was a sore trial to me; but
 
 7.84 THE QUEST OF 
 
 though love may be deceived, vanity is ever 
 vigilant, and vanity saved me. Yet I left her 
 with an aching sense of having been a brute, 
 and on the morning of my departure from 
 Paris, as I said good-bye to William and 
 Dora, I spoke somewhat seriously of Semira- 
 mis. Dora, Dora-like, had believed in her 
 all along, — not having enjoyed William's 
 opportunities of studying her, — and she 
 reproached me with being rather hard- 
 hearted. 
 
 " Nonsense," said William, " if she really 
 cared, would n't she have been up to bid you 
 good-bye? " 
 
 The words were hardly gone from his lips 
 when there came a little knock at the door. 
 It was Semiramis ; she had come to say good- 
 oye. Was it in nature not to be touched? 
 " Good-bye," she said, as we stood a moment 
 alone in the hall. " I shall always think of 
 you ; you shall not be to me as a ship that 
 has passed in the night, though to me you 
 have behaved very like an iceberg." 
 
 We parted in tears and kisses, and I lived 
 for some weeks with that sense of having been 
 a Nero, till two months after I received a
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 2S5 
 
 much glazed and silvered card to the usuai 
 effect. 
 
 And so I ceased to repine for the wound I 
 had made in the heart of Semiramis Wilcox. 
 
 Of another whom I met and loved in that 
 brief month in Paris, I cherish tenderer 
 memories. Prim little Pauline Deschapelles ! 
 How clearly I can still see the respectable 
 brass plate on the door of your little flat — 
 " Mademoiselle Deschapelles — Modes et 
 Robes ; " and indeed the " modes et robes " 
 were true enough. For you were in truth a 
 very hard-working little dressmaker, and I 
 well remember how impressed I was to sit 
 beside you, as you phed your needle on some 
 gown that must be finished by the evening, 
 and meditate on the quaint contrast between 
 your almost Puritanic industry and your 
 innocent love of pleasure. I don't think I 
 ever met a more conscientious little woman 
 than Httle Pauline Deschapelles. 
 
 There was but one drawback to our inter- 
 course. She did n't know a word of English, 
 and I could n't speak a word of French. So 
 we had to make shift to love without either 
 language. But sometimes Pauline would
 
 286 THE QUEST OF 
 
 throw down her stitching in amused im- 
 patience, and, going to her dainty secretaire, 
 write me a Httle message in tlic simplest 
 baby French — which I would answer in 
 French which would knit her brows for a 
 moment or two, and then send her off in 
 peals of laughter. 
 
 It was French ! I know. Among the 
 bric-a-brac of my heart I still cherish some 
 of those little slips of paper with which 
 we made international love — question and 
 answer. 
 
 " Vous allez m'oublier, et ne plus penser k 
 moi — ni me voir. Les hommcs — 6goIstcs — 
 mcnteurs, pas dire la verite ..." so ran the 
 questions, considerably devoid of auxiliary 
 verbs and such details of construction. 
 
 " Je serais jamais t'oublicr," ran the frightful 
 answers ! 
 
 Dear Pauline! Shall I ever see her again? 
 She was but twenty-six. She may still live.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 2Sjr 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 END OF BOOK THREE 
 
 So ended my pilgrimage. I had wandered 
 far, had loved many, but I came back to Lon- 
 don without the Golden Girl. I had begun 
 my pilgrimage with a vision, and it was with 
 a vision that I ended it. From all my goings 
 to and fro upon the earth, I had brought back 
 only the image of a woman's face, — the face 
 of that strange woman of the moorland, still 
 haunting my dreams of the night and the day. 
 
 It was autumn in my old garden, damp and 
 forsaken, and the mulberry-tree was hung with 
 little yellow shields. My books looked weary 
 of awaiting me, and they and the whole lonely 
 house begged me to take them where some- 
 times they might be handled by human 
 fingers, mellowed by lamplight, cheered by 
 friendly laughter. 
 
 The very chairs begged mutely to be sat 
 upon, the chill white beds to be slept in. Yes,
 
 ^88 THE QUEST OF 
 
 he very furniture sremcd even lonelier than 
 myself. 
 
 So I took heed of their dumb appeal. 
 
 " I know," I answered them tenderly, — " I 
 too, with you, have looked on better days, I 
 ♦oo have been where bells have knoU'd to 
 church, I too have sat at many a good man's 
 feast, — yes! I miss human society, even as 
 you, my books, my bedsteads, and my side- 
 boards, — so let it be. It is plain our little 
 Margaret is not coming back, our little Mar- 
 garet, dear haunted rooms, will never come 
 back ; no longer shall her little silken figure 
 flit up and down your quiet staircases, her 
 hands filled with flowers, and her heart hum- 
 ming with little songs. Yes, let us go, it is very 
 lonely ; we shall die if we stay here all so 
 lonely together; it is time, let us go." 
 
 So thereon I wrote to a furniture-remover, 
 and went out to walk round the moss\- old 
 garden for the last time, and say good-bye to 
 the great mulberry, under whose Dodonaesque 
 shade we had sat half frightened on starr>' 
 nights, to the apple-trees whose blossom had 
 seemed like fairy-land to Margaret and me, 
 town-bred folk, to the apricots and the peaches
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 289 
 
 and the nectarines that it had seemed almost 
 wicked to own, — as though we had gone 
 abroad in silk and velvet, — to the little 
 grassy orchard, and to the little green corner 
 of it, where Margaret had fallen asleep that 
 summer afternoon, in the great wicker-chair, 
 and I had brought a dear friend on tiptoe 
 to gaze on her asleep, with her olive cheeks 
 delicately flushed, her great eyelids closed 
 like the cheeks of roses, and her gold hair 
 tumbled about her neck . . . 
 
 Well, well, good-bye, — tears are foolish 
 things. They will not bring Margaret back. 
 Good-bye, old garden, good-bye, I shall never 
 see you again, — good-bye.
 
 390 THE QUEST OF 
 
 BOOK IV 
 
 THE POSTSCRIPT TO A PILGRIMAGE 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 SIX YEARS AFTER 
 
 This book is like a woman's letter. The 
 most important part of it is the postscript 
 Six years lie between the end of the last 
 chapter and the beginning of this. Mean- 
 while, I had moved to sociable chambers 
 within sound of the city clocks, and had lived 
 the life of a lonely man about town, sinking 
 more and more into the comfortable sloth of 
 bachelorhood. I had long come to look back 
 upon my pilgrimage as a sort of Indian-sum- 
 mer youth, being, as the reader can reckon 
 for himself, just on thirty-seven. As one will, 
 with one's most serious experiences, hastening
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 291 
 
 to laugh lest one should weep, as the old 
 philosopher said, I had made some fun out 
 of my quest, in the form of a paper for a 
 bookish society to which I belonged, on 
 " Woman as a Learned Pursuit!' It is 
 printed among the transactions of the soci- 
 ety, and is accessible to the curious only by 
 loan from the members, and I regret that I 
 am unable to print any extracts here. Per- 
 haps when I am dead the society will see the 
 criminal selfishness of reserving for itself what 
 was meant for mankind. 
 
 Meanwhile, however, it is fast locked and 
 buried deep in the archives of the club. 
 I have two marriages to record in the in- 
 terval : one that of a young lady whom I 
 must still think of as * Nicolete' to Sir Mar- 
 maduke Pettigrew, Bart., of Dultowers Hall, 
 and the other the well-known marriage of 
 Sylvia Joy . . . 
 
 Sylvia Joy married after all her fine prot- 
 estations ! Yes ! but I 'm sure you will for- 
 give her, for she was married to a lord. 
 When one is twenty and romantic one would 
 scorn a woman who would jilt us for wealth 
 and position ; at thirty, one would scorn any
 
 292 THE QUEST OF 
 
 woman who did n't. Ah me ! how one 
 changes ! No one, I can honestly say, was 
 happier over these two weddings than I, and 
 I sent Sylvia her petticoat as a wedding 
 present. 
 
 • « « « • 
 
 But it was to tell of other matters that I 
 reopen this book and once more take up my 
 pen — matters so near to my heart that I 
 shrink from writing of them, and am half 
 afraid that the attempt may prove too hard 
 for me after all, and my book end on a 
 broken cry of pain. Yet, at the same time, 
 I want to write of them, for they are beautiful 
 and solemn, and good food for the heart. 
 
 Besides, though my pilgrimage had been 
 ended so long, they are really a part, yea, 
 the part for which, though I knew it not, all 
 the rest has been written — for they tell how 
 I came to find by accident her whom so long 
 I had sought of design. 
 
 How shall I tell of Thee who, first and last 
 of all women, gave and awoke in me that love 
 which is the golden key of the world, the 
 mystic revelation of the holy meaning of life, 
 love that alone may pass through the awful
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 293 
 
 gates of the stars, and gaze unafraid into the 
 blue abysses beyond? 
 
 Ah ! Love, it seemed far away indeed from 
 the stars, the place where we met, and only 
 by the light of love's eyes might we have 
 found each other — as only by the light of 
 love's eyes . . . But enough, my Heart, the 
 world waits to hear our story, — - the world 
 once so unloving to you, the world with a 
 heart so hard and anon so soft for love. 
 When the story is ended, my love, when the 
 story is ended —
 
 294 THE QUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 GRACE O' GOD 
 
 It was a hard winter's night four years ago. 
 lovely and merciless ; and towards midnight I 
 walked home from a theatre to my rooms in 
 St. James's Street. The Vcnusberg of Pic- 
 cadilly looked white as a nun with snow 
 and moonlight, but the melancholy music 
 of pleasure, and the sad daughters of joy, 
 seemed not to heed the cold. For another 
 hour death and pleasure would dance there 
 beneath the electric lights. 
 
 Through the strange women clustering at 
 the corners I took my way, — women of the 
 Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, 
 and Hittites, — and I thought, as I looked 
 into their poor painted faces, — faces but half 
 human, vampirish faces, faces already waxen 
 with the look of the grave, — I thought, as I 
 often did, of the poor little girl whom De 
 Quincey loved, the good-hearted little ' peri-
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 295 
 
 patetic ' as he called her, who had succoured 
 him during those nights, when, as a young 
 man, he wandered homeless about these very 
 streets, — that good, kind little Ann whom De 
 Quincey had loved, then so strangely lost, 
 and for whose face he looked into women's 
 faces as long as he lived. Often have I stood 
 at the corner of Titchfield Street, and thought 
 how De Quincey had stood there night after 
 night waiting for her to come, but all in vain> 
 and how from the abyss of oblivion into 
 which some cruel chance had swept her, not 
 one cry from her ever reached him again. 
 
 I thought, too, as I often did, what if the 
 face I seek should be here among these poor 
 outcasts, — golden face hidden behind a mask 
 of shame, true heart still beating true even 
 amidst this infernal world ! 
 
 Thus musing, I had walked my way out of 
 the throng, and only a figure here and there 
 in the shadows of doorways waited and waited 
 in the cold. 
 
 It was something about one of these wait- 
 ing figures, — some movement, some chance 
 posture, — that presently surprised my atten- 
 tion and awakened a sudden sense of half-
 
 29ft TH?: QUEST OF 
 
 recof^nition. She stood well in the shadow^ 
 seeming rather to shrink from than to court 
 attention. As I walked close by her and 
 looked keenly into her face, she cast down 
 her eyes and half turned away. Surely, I 
 had seen that tall, noble figure somewhere 
 before, that haughty head ; and then with 
 the apparition a thought struck me — but, 
 no ! it could n't be she ! not here ! 
 
 " It is," said my soul, as I turned and 
 walked past her again; "you missed her 
 once, are you going to miss her again?" 
 
 " It is," said my eyes, as they swept her 
 for the third time ; " but she had glorious 
 chestnut hair, and the hair of this woman 
 is— gilded." 
 
 "It is she," said my heart; "thank God, 
 it is she ! " 
 
 So it was that I went up to that tall, shy 
 figure. 
 
 " It must be very cold here," I said ; " will 
 you not join me in some supper?" 
 
 She assented, and we sought one of the 
 many radiating centres of festivity in the 
 neighbourhood. She was very tired and cold,
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 297 
 
 — so tired she seemed hardly to have the 
 spirit to eat, and evidently the cold had taken 
 tight clutch of her lungs, for she had a cough 
 that went to my heart to hear, and her face 
 was ghastly pale. When I had persuaded her 
 to drink a little wine, she grew more ani- 
 mated and spots of suspicious colour came 
 into her cheeks. So far she had seemed all 
 but oblivious of my presence, but now she 
 gave me a sweet smile of gratitude, one of 
 those irradiating transfiguring smiles that 
 change the whole face, and belong to few 
 faces, the heavenly smile of a pure soul. 
 
 Yes, it was she ! The woman who sat in 
 front of me was the woman whom I had met 
 so strangely that day on that solitary moor- 
 land, and whom in prophecy still more strange 
 my soul had declared to be, " now and for 
 ever and before all worlds the woman God 
 had created for me, and that unless I could 
 be hers and she mine, there could be no 
 home, no peace, for either of us so long as 
 we lived — " and now so strangely met again. 
 
 Yes, it was she ! 
 
 For the moment my mind had room for no 
 other thought. I cared not to conjecture by
 
 298 THE GUEST OF 
 
 what devious ways God had brought her to 
 my side. I cared not what mire her feet had 
 trodden. She had carried her face pure as a 
 lily through all the foul and sooty air. There 
 was a pure heart in her voice. Sin is of the 
 soul, and this soul had not sinned ! Let him 
 that is without sin amongst you cast the first 
 stone. 
 
 " Why did you dye that wonderful chest- 
 nut hair?" I asked her presently — and was 
 sorry next minute for the pain that shot across 
 her face, but I just wanted to hint at what I 
 designed not to reveal fully till later on, and 
 thus to hint too that it was not as one of the 
 number of her defilers that I had sought her. 
 
 *' Why," she said, "how do you know the 
 colour of my hair? We have never met 
 before." 
 
 " Yes, we have," I said, " and that was why 
 I spoke to you to-night. I '11 tell you where 
 it was another time." 
 
 But after all I could not desist from telling 
 her that night, for, as afterwards at her lodg- 
 ing we sat over the fire, talking as if we had 
 known each other all our lives, there seemed 
 no reason for an arbitrary delay.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 299 
 
 I described to her the solitary moorland 
 road, and the grey-gowned woman's figure in 
 front of me, and the gig coming along to 
 meet her, and the salutation of the two girls, 
 and I told her all one look of her face had 
 meant for me, and how I had wildly sought 
 her in vain, and from that day to this had 
 held her image in my heart. 
 
 And as I told her, she sobbed with her 
 head against my knee, and her great hair 
 filling my lap with gold. In broken words 
 she drew for me the other side of the picture 
 of that long-past summer day. 
 
 Yes, the girl in the gig was her sister, and 
 they were the only daughters of a farmer who 
 had been rich once, but had come to ruin by 
 drink and misfortune. They had been brought 
 up from girls by an old grandmother, with 
 whom the sister was living at the time of my 
 seeing them. Yes, Tom was her husband. 
 He was a doctor in the neighbourhood when 
 he married her, and a man, I surmised, of 
 some parts and promise, but, moving to town, 
 he had fallen into loose ways, taken to drink- 
 ing and gambling, and had finally deserted 
 her for another woman — at the very moment
 
 300 THE QUEST OF 
 
 when their first child was born. The child 
 died — 
 
 " Thank God ! " she added with sudden 
 vehemence, and "I — well, you will won- 
 der how I came to this, I wonder myself — 
 it has all happened but six months ago, and yet 
 I seem to have forgotten — only the broken- 
 hearted and the hungry would understand, if 
 I could remember — and yet it was not life, 
 certainly not life I wanted — and yet I could n't 
 die — " 
 
 The more I came to know Elizabeth and 
 realise the rare delicacy of her nature, the 
 simplicity of her mind, and the purity of her 
 soul, the less was I able to comprehend the 
 psychology of that false step which her great 
 misery had forced her to take. For hers was 
 not a sensual, pleasure-loving nature. In fact, 
 there was a certain curious Puritanism about 
 her, a Puritanism which found a startlingly 
 incongruous and almost laughable expression 
 in the Scripture almanac which hung on the 
 wall at the end of her bed, and the Bible, and 
 two or three Sunday-school stories which, 
 with a copy of "Jane Eyre," were the only 
 books that lay upon the circular mahogany 
 table.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 301 
 
 Once I ventured gently to chaff her about 
 this religiosity of hers. 
 
 " But surely you believe in God, dear," she 
 had answered, '* you 're not an atheist ! " 
 
 I think an atheist, with all her experience 
 of human monsters, was for her the depth of 
 human depravity. 
 
 "No, dear," I had answered; *' \{ you cdiU. 
 believe in God, surely I can ! " 
 
 I repeat that this gap in Elizabeth's psy* 
 chology puzzled me, and it puzzles me still, 
 but it puzzled me only as the method oi 
 working out some problem which after all 
 had " come out right " might puzzle one. 
 It was only the process that was obscure. 
 The result was gold, whatever the dark 
 process might be. Was it simply that Eliza- 
 beth was one of that rare few who can touch 
 pitch and not be defiled? — or was it, I 
 have sometimes wondered, an unconscious 
 and after all a sound casuistry that had saved 
 Elizabeth's soul, an instinctive philosophy 
 that taught her, so to say, to lay a Sigurd's 
 sword between her soul and body, and to 
 argue that nothing can defile the body with« 
 out the consent of the soul.
 
 302 THE QUKST OF 
 
 In deep natures there is always what one 
 iiii^ht call a lover's leap to be taken by those 
 that would love them — somethin*^ one cannot 
 understand to be taken on trust, something 
 even that one fears to be gladly adventured 
 ... all this, and more, I knew that I could 
 safely venture for Elizabeth's sake, ere I kissed 
 her white brow and stole away in the early 
 hours of that winter's morning. 
 
 As I did so I had taken one of the sump- 
 tuous strands of her hair into my hand and 
 kissed it too. 
 
 " Promise me to let this come back to its 
 own beautiful colour," I had said, as I 
 nodded to a little phial labelled " Peroxide 
 of Hydrogen" on her mantelshelf. 
 
 " Would you like to?" she had said. 
 
 " Yes, do it for me." 
 
 One day some months after I cut from her 
 dear head one long thick lock, one half of 
 which was gold and the other half chestnut. 
 I take it out and look at it as I write, and, as 
 when I first cut it, it seems still a symbol of 
 Elizabeth's life, the sun and the shadow, only 
 that the gold was the shadow, and the chest- 
 nut was the sun.
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 303 
 
 The time came when the locks, from crown 
 to tip, were all chestnut — but when it came 
 I would have given the world for them to be 
 gold again ; for Elizabeth had said a curious 
 thing when she had given me her promise. 
 
 " All right, dear," she had said, " but some- 
 thing tells me that when they are all brown 
 again our happiness will be at an end." 
 
 "How long will that take?" I had said, 
 trying to be gay, though an involuntary 
 shudder had gone through me, less at her 
 words than because of the strange convic- 
 tion of her manner. 
 
 " About two years, — perhaps a little 
 more," she said, answering me quite seri- 
 ously, as she gravely measured the shining 
 tresses, half her body's length, with her eye.
 
 304 TlIK QUEST OF 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 
 
 One fresh and sunny morning, some months 
 after this night, Elizabeth and I stood before 
 the simple altar of a little country church, for 
 the news had come to us that her husband 
 was dead, and thus we were free to belong to 
 each other before all the world. The exqui- 
 site stillness in the cool old church was as the 
 peace in our hearts, and the rippling sound 
 , of the sunlit leaves outside seemed like the 
 very murmur of the stream of life down 
 which we dreamed of gliding together from 
 that hour. 
 
 It was one of those moments which some- 
 times come and go without any apparent 
 cause, when life suddenly takes a mystical 
 aspect of completeness, all its discords are 
 Ijarmonised by some unseen hand of the 
 spirit, and all its imperfections fall away. 
 The lover of beauty and the lover of God
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 305 
 
 alike know these strange moments, but none 
 know them with such a mighty satisfaction 
 as a man and a woman who love as loved 
 Elizabeth and I. 
 
 Love for ever completes the world, for it 
 is no future of higher achievement, no 
 expectation of greater joy. It lives for ever 
 in a present made perfect by itself. Love 
 can dream of no greater blessedness than it- 
 self, of no heaven but its own. God himself 
 could have added no touch of happiness to 
 our happy hearts that grave and sunny morn- 
 ing. You philosophers who go searching for 
 the meaning of life, thinkers reading so sadly, 
 and let us hope so wrongly, the riddle of the 
 world — life has but one meaning, the riddle 
 but one answer — which is Love. To love is 
 to put yourself in harmony with the spheral 
 music of creation, to stand in the centre of 
 the universe, and see it good and whole as it 
 appears in the eye of God. 
 
 Even Death himself, the great and terrible 
 King of kings, though he may break the 
 heart of love with agonies and anguish and 
 slow tortures of separation, may break not 
 his faith. No one that has loved will dream 
 
 ao
 
 3o6 THE QUEST OF 
 
 even death too terrible a price to pay for the 
 revelation of love. For that revelation once 
 made can never be recalled. As a little sprig 
 of lavender will perfume a queen's wardrobe, 
 so will a short year of love keep sweet a long 
 life. And love's best gifts death can never 
 take away. Nay, indeed, death does not so 
 much rob as enrich the gifts of love. The 
 dead face that was fair grows fairer each 
 spring, sweet memories grow more sweet, 
 what was silver is now gold, and as years 
 go by, the very death of love becomes its 
 immortality. 
 
 I think I shall never hear Elizabeth's voice 
 again, never look into her eyes, never kiss 
 her dear lips — but Elizabeth is still mine, 
 and I am hers, as in that morning when we 
 kissed in that little chancel amid the flicker- 
 ing light, and passed out into the sun and 
 down the lanes, to our little home among the 
 meadow-sweet. 
 
 She is still as real to me as the stars, — 
 and, alas, as far away! I think no thought 
 that does not fly to her, I have no joys I do 
 not share with her, I tell her when the spring 
 is here, and we sit beneath the moon and
 
 THE GOLDEN GIRL 307 
 
 listen to the nightjar together. Sometimes 
 we are merry together as in the old time, and 
 our laughter makes nightfaring folk to cross 
 themselves ; my work, my dreams, my loves, 
 are all hers, and my very sins are sinned for 
 her sake. 
 
 Two years did Elizabeth and I know the 
 love that passcth all understanding, and day 
 by day the chestnut upon her head was more 
 and the gold less, till the day came that she 
 had prophesied, and with the day a little child, 
 whose hair had stolen all her mother's gold, 
 as her heart had drained away her mother's 
 life. 
 
 Ah ! reader, may it be long before you 
 kneel at the bedside of her you love best in 
 the world, and know that of all your love is 
 left but a hundred heart-beats, while opposite 
 sits Death, watch in hand, and fingers upon 
 her wrist. 
 
 " Husband," whispered Elizabeth, as we 
 looked at each other for the last time, " let 
 her be your little golden girl ..." 
 
 And then a strange sweetness stole over 
 her face, and the dream of Elizabeth's life 
 was ended.
 
 3o8 THE GOLDEN GIRL j 
 
 I 
 
 As I write I hear in the still house the run- 
 ning of little feet, a fairy patter sweet and ' 
 terrible to the heart. 1 
 
 Little feet, little feet — perhaps if I follow | 
 
 you I shall find again our mother that is lost. ] 
 
 Perhaps Elizabeth left you with me that 1 j 
 
 should not miss the way. '
 
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