large parish, I have only one curate, and my leisure, as you
will readily understand ..."

The extent of the parish and the scantiness of the vicar's leisure
occupied the remainder of the interview, and Oleron thanked the vicar,
took his leave, and walked slowly home.

He walked slowly for a reason, twice turning away from the house within a
stone's-throw of the gate and taking another turn of twenty minutes or
so. He had a very ticklish piece of work now before him; it required the
greatest mental concentration; it was nothing less than to bring his
mind, if he might, into such a state of unpreoccupation and receptivity
that he should see the place as he had seen it on that morning when,
his removal accomplished, he had sat down to begin the sixteenth chapter
of the first _Romilly_.

For, could he recapture that first impression, he now hoped for far more
from it. Formerly, he had carried no end of mental lumber. Before the
influence of the place had been able to find him out at all, it had had
the inertia of those dreary chapters to overcome. No results had shown.
The process had been one of slow saturation, charging, filling up to a
brim. But now he was light, unburdened, rid at last both of that
_Romilly_ and of her prototype. Now for the new unknown, coy, jealous,
bewitching, Beckoning Fair!...

At half-past two of the afternoon he put his key into the Yale lock,
entered, and closed the door behind him....

His fantastic attempt was instantly and astonishingly successful. He
could have shouted with triumph as he entered the room; it was as if he
had _escaped_ into it. Once more, as in the days when his writing had had
a daily freshness and wonder and promise for him, he was conscious of
that new ease and mastery and exhilaration and release. The air of the
place seemed to hold more oxygen; as if his own specific gravity had
changed, his very tread seemed less ponderable. The flowers in the bowls,
the fair proportions of the meadowsweet-coloured panels and mouldings,
the polished floor, and the lofty and faintly starred ceiling, fairly
laughed their welcome. Oleron actually laughed back, and spoke aloud.

"Oh, you're pretty, pretty!" he flattered it.

Then he lay down on his couch.

He spent that afternoon as a convalescent who expected a dear visitor
might have spent it--in a delicious vacancy, smiling now and then as
if in his sleep, and ever lifting drowsy and contented eyes to his
alluring surroundings