l, and
caught the varied skyline of the crumbling edifices encrusting it.
St. Ouen's, Rouen, knew him for days; so did Vezelay, Sens, and many a
hallowed monument besides. Abandoning the inspection of early French art
with the same purposeless haste as he had shown in undertaking it, he
went further, and lingered about Ferrara, Padua, and Pisa. Satiated with
mediaevalism, he tried the Roman Forum. Next he observed moonlight and
starlight effects by the bay of Naples. He turned to Austria, became
enervated and depressed on Hungarian and Bohemian plains, and was
refreshed again by breezes on the declivities of the Carpathians.

Then he found himself in Greece. He visited the plain of Marathon, and
strove to imagine the Persian defeat; to Mars Hill, to picture St. Paul
addressing the ancient Athenians; to Thermopylae and Salamis, to run
through the facts and traditions of the Second Invasion--the result of
his endeavours being more or less chaotic. Knight grew as weary of these
places as of all others. Then he felt the shock of an earthquake in the
Ionian Islands, and went to Venice. Here he shot in gondolas up and down
the winding thoroughfare of the Grand Canal, and loitered on calle and
piazza at night, when the lagunes were undisturbed by a ripple, and no
sound was to be heard but the stroke of the midnight clock. Afterwards
he remained for weeks in the museums, galleries, and libraries of
Vienna, Berlin, and Paris; and thence came home.

Time thus rolls us on to a February afternoon, divided by fifteen months
from the parting of Elfride and her lover in the brown stubble field
towards the sea.

Two men obviously not Londoners, and with a touch of foreignness in
their look, met by accident on one of the gravel walks leading across
Hyde Park. The younger, more given to looking about him than his fellow,
saw and noticed the approach of his senior some time before the latter
had raised his eyes from the ground, upon which they were bent in an
abstracted gaze that seemed habitual with him.

'Mr. Knight--indeed it is!' exclaimed the younger man.

'Ah, Stephen Smith!' said Knight.

Simultaneous operations might now have been observed progressing in
both, the result being that an expression less frank and impulsive than
the first took possession of their features. It was manifest that the
next words uttered were a superficial covering to constraint on both
sides.

'Have you been in England long?' said Knight.

'Only