nd the whisper of our
passion and sorrows traversing the flushed world! Was she coming? Not
she, but a touchstone, a relentless mirror, a piercing eye, a mind
severe as the Goddess of the God's head: a princess indeed, but
essentially a princess above women: a remorseless intellect, an actual
soul visible in the flesh. She was truth. Was I true? Not so very false,
yet how far from truth! The stains on me (a modern man writing his
history is fugitive and crepuscular in alluding to them, as a woman
kneeling at the ear-guichet) burnt like the blood-spots on the criminal
compelled to touch his victim by savage ordinance, which knew the savage
and how to search him. And these were faults of weakness rather than
the sins of strength. I might as fairly hope for absolution of them from
Ottilia as from offended laws of my natural being, gentle though she
was, and charitable.

Was I not guilty of letting her come on to me hoodwinked at this
moment? I had a faint memory of Miss Goodwin's saying that she had been
deceived, and I suggested a plan of holding aloof until she had warned
the princess of my perfect recovery, to leave it at her option to see
me.

'Yes,' Miss Goodwin assented: 'if you like, Harry.'

Her compassion for me only tentatively encouraged the idea. 'It would,
perhaps, be right. You are the judge. If you can do it. You are acting
bravely.' She must have laughed at me in her heart.

The hours wore on. My curse of introspection left me, and descending
through the town to the pier, amid the breezy blue skirts and
bonnet-strings, we watched the packet-boat approaching. There was in
advance one of the famous swift island wherries. Something went wrong
with it, for it was overtaken, and the steamer came in first. I jumped
on board, much bawled at. Out of a crowd of unknown visages, Janet
appeared: my aunt Dorothy was near her. The pair began chattering of my
paleness, and wickedness in keeping my illness unknown to them. They had
seen Temple on an excursion to London; he had betrayed me, as he would
have betrayed an archangel to Janet.

'Will you not look at us, Harry?' they both said.

The passengers were quitting the boat, strangers every one.

'Harry, have we really offended you in coming?' said Janet.

My aunt Dorothy took the blame on herself.

I scarcely noticed them, beyond leading them on to the pier-steps
and leaving them under charge of Miss Goodwin, who had, in matters of
luggage and porterage, the