ht his lunch into the room where
he was writing, and he beheld her uncover it. She went to the window to
adjust a blind which had slipped, and he had a good view of her profile.
It was not unlike that of one of the three goddesses in Rubens's
'Judgment of Paris,' and in contour was nigh perfection. But it was in
her full face that the vision of her mother was most apparent.

'Did you cook all this, Avice?' he asked, arousing himself.

She turned and half-smiled, merely murmuring, 'Yes, sir.'

Well he knew the arrangement of those white teeth. In the junction of
two of the upper ones there was a slight irregularity; no stranger would
have noticed it, nor would he, but that he knew of the same mark in
her mother's mouth, and looked for it here. Till Avice the Second had
revealed it this moment by her smile, he had never beheld that mark
since the parting from Avice the First, when she had smiled under his
kiss as the copy had done now.

Next morning, when dressing, he heard her through the ricketty floor of
the building engaged in conversation with the other servants. Having
by this time regularly installed herself as the exponent of the
Long-pursued--as one who, by no initiative of his own, had been chosen
by some superior Power as the vehicle of her next debut, she attracted
him by the cadences of her voice; she would suddenly drop it to a rich
whisper of roguishness, when the slight rural monotony of its narrative
speech disappeared, and soul and heart--or what seemed soul and
heart--resounded. The charm lay in the intervals, using that word in its
musical sense. She would say a few syllables in one note, and end her
sentence in a soft modulation upwards, then downwards, then into her
own note again. The curve of sound was as artistic as any line of beauty
ever struck by his pencil--as satisfying as the curves of her who was
the World's Desire.

The subject of her discourse he cared nothing about--it was no more his
interest than his concern. He took special pains that in catching her
voice he might not comprehend her words. To the tones he had a right,
none to the articulations. By degrees he could not exist long without
this sound.

On Sunday evening he found that she went to church. He followed behind
her over the open road, keeping his eye on the little hat with its
bunch of cock's feathers as on a star. When she had passed in Pierston
observed her position and took a seat behind her.

Engaged in the study