above and around him, the
lighthouse on duty at the distant point, the lightship winking from
the sandbank, the combing of the pebble beach by the tide beneath, the
church away south-westward, where the island fathers lay.

He walked the wild summit till his legs ached, and his heart ached--till
he seemed to hear on the upper wind the stones of the slingers whizzing
past, and the voices of the invaders who annihilated them, and married
their wives and daughters, and produced Avice as the ultimate flower of
the combined stocks. Still she did not come. It was more than foolish to
wait, yet he could not help waiting. At length he discerned a dot of a
figure, which he knew to be hers rather by its motion than by its shape.

How incomparably the immaterial dream dwarfed the grandest of
substantial things, when here, between those three sublimities--the
sky, the rock, and the ocean--the minute personality of this washer-girl
filled his consciousness to its extremest boundary, and the stupendous
inanimate scene shrank to a corner therein.

But all at once the approaching figure had disappeared. He looked about;
she had certainly vanished. At one side of the road was a low wall, but
she could not have gone behind that without considerable trouble and
singular conduct. He looked behind him; she had reappeared further on
the road.

Jocelyn Pierston hurried after; and, discerning his movement, Avice
stood still. When he came up, she was slily shaking with restrained
laughter.

'Well, what does this mean, my dear girl?' he asked.

Her inner mirth escaping in spite of her she turned askance and said:
'When you was following me to Street o' Wells, two hours ago, I looked
round and saw you, and huddied behind a stone! You passed and brushed
my frock without seeing me. And when, on my way backalong, I saw you
waiting hereabout again, I slipped over the wall, and ran past you! If
I had not stopped and looked round at 'ee, you would never have catched
me!'

'What did you do that for, you elf!'

'That you shouldn't find me.'

'That's not exactly a reason. Give another, dear Avice,' he said, as he
turned and walked beside her homeward.

She hesitated. 'Come!' he urged again.

''Twas because I thought you wanted to be my young man,' she answered.

'What a wild thought of yours! Supposing I did, wouldn't you have me?'

'Not now.... And not for long, even if it had been sooner than now.'

'Why?'

'If I tell you, you won't l