ne. I can't
realise that it is too late.

CASTLES NEAR SPAIN

I.

That he should not have guessed it from the beginning seems odd, if
you like, until one stops to consider the matter twice; then, I think,
one sees that after all there was no shadow of a reason why he should
have done so,--one sees, indeed, that even had a suspicion of the
truth at any time crossed his mind, he would have had the best of
reasons for scouting it as nonsense. It is obvious to us from the
first word, because we know instinctively that otherwise there would
be no story; it is that which knits a mere sequence of incidents into
a coherent, communicable whole. But, to his perceptions, the thing
never presented itself as a story at all. It wasn't an anecdote which
somebody had buttonholed him to tell; it was an adventure in which he
found himself launched, an experience to be enjoyed bit by bit, as it
befell, but in no wise suggestive of any single specific climax. What
earthly hint had he received from which to infer the identity of the
two women? On the contrary, weren't the actions of the one totally
inconsistent with what everybody assured him was the manner of
life--with what the necessities of the case led him to believe would
be the condition of spirit--of the other? If the tale were to be
published, the fun would lie, not in attempting to mystify the reader,
but in watching with him the mystification of the hero,--in showing
how he played at hoodman-blind with his destiny, and how surprised he
was, when, the bandage stripped from his eyes, he saw whom he had
caught.

II.

On that first morning,--the first after his arrival at Saint-Graal,
and the first, also, of the many on which they encountered each other
in the forest,--he was bent upon a sentimental pilgrimage to
Granjolaye. He was partly obeying, partly seeking, an emotion. His
mind, inevitably, was full of old memories; the melancholy by which
they were attended he found distinctly pleasant, and was inclined to
nurse. To revisit the scene of their boy-and-girl romance, would
itself be romantic. In a little while he would come to the park gates,
and could look up the long, straight avenue to the chateau,--there
where, when they were children, twenty years ago, he and she had
played so earnestly at being married, burning for each other with one
of those strange, inarticulate passions that almost every childhood
knows; and where now, worse than widowed, she withheld