another
ascending road, modern, almost as steep as the first, and perfectly
straight. This is the road to the forts.

Pierston arrived at the forking of the ways, and paused for breath.
Before turning to the right, his proper and picturesque course, he
looked up the uninteresting left road to the fortifications. It was new,
long, white, regular, tapering to a vanishing point, like a lesson in
perspective. About a quarter of the way up a girl was resting beside a
basket of white linen: and by the shape of her hat and the nature of her
burden he recognized her.

She did not see him, and abandoning the right-hand course he slowly
ascended the incline she had taken. He observed that her attention was
absorbed by something aloft. He followed the direction of her gaze.
Above them towered the green-grey mountain of grassy stone, here
levelled at the top by military art. The skyline was broken every now
and then by a little peg-like object--a sentry-box; and near one of
these a small red spot kept creeping backwards and forwards monotonously
against the heavy sky.

Then he divined that she had a soldier-lover.

She turned her head, saw him, and took up her clothes-basket to continue
the ascent. The steepness was such that to climb it unencumbered was a
breathless business; the linen made her task a cruelty to her. 'You'll
never get to the forts with that weight,' he said. 'Give it to me.'

But she would not, and he stood still, watching her as she panted up the
way; for the moment an irradiated being, the epitome of a whole sex: by
the beams of his own infatuation

'....... robed in such exceeding glory
That he beheld her not;'

beheld her not as she really was, as she was even to himself sometimes.
But to the soldier what was she? Smaller and smaller she waned up the
rigid mathematical road, still gazing at the soldier aloft, as Pierston
gazed at her. He could just discern sentinels springing up at the
different coigns of vantage that she passed, but seeing who she was they
did not intercept her; and presently she crossed the drawbridge over the
enormous chasm surrounding the forts, passed the sentries there also,
and disappeared through the arch into the interior. Pierston could not
see the sentry now, and there occurred to him the hateful idea that this
scarlet rival was meeting and talking freely to her, the unprotected
orphan girl of his sweet original Avice; perhaps, relieved of duty,
escorting her acr