ysterious ingredient sucked from the isle; otherwise a racial instinct
necessary to the absolute unison of a pair. Thus, though he might
never love a woman of the island race, for lack in her of the desired
refinement, he could not love long a kimberlin--a woman other than of
the island race, for her lack of this groundwork of character.

Such was Pierston's view of things. Another fancy of his, an artist's
superstition merely, may be mentioned. The Caros, like some other local
families, suggested a Roman lineage, more or less grafted on the stock
of the Slingers. Their features recalled those of the Italian peasantry
to any one as familiar as he was with them; and there were evidences
that the Roman colonists had been populous and long-abiding in and near
this corner of Britain. Tradition urged that a temple to Venus once
stood at the top of the Roman road leading up into the isle; and
possibly one to the love-goddess of the Slingers antedated this. What so
natural as that the true star of his soul would be found nowhere but in
one of the old island breed?

After dinner his old friend Somers came in to smoke, and when they had
talked a little while Somers alluded casually to some place at which
they would meet on the morrow.

'I sha'n't be there,' said Pierston.

'But you promised?'

'Yes. But I shall be at the island--looking at a dead woman's grave.'
As he spoke his eyes turned, and remained fixed on a table near. Somers
followed the direction of his glance to a photograph on a stand.

'Is that she?' he asked.

'Yes.'

'Rather a bygone affair, then?'

Pierston acknowledged it. 'She's the only sweetheart I ever slighted,
Alfred,' he said. 'Because she's the only one I ought to have cared for.
That's just the fool I have always been.'

'But if she's dead and buried, you can go to her grave at any time as
well as now, to keep up the sentiment.'

'I don't know that she's buried.'

'But to-morrow--the Academy night! Of all days why go then?'

'I don't care about the Academy.'

'Pierston--you are our only inspired sculptor. You are our Praxiteles,
or rather our Lysippus. You are almost the only man of this generation
who has been able to mould and chisel forms living enough to draw the
idle public away from the popular paintings into the usually deserted
Lecture-room, and people who have seen your last pieces of stuff say
there has been nothing like them since sixteen hundred and--since the
sculptors 'of