a consideration
less acute than I pretended. Somehow I didn't care if I did lose our
young lady. Now that I knew the worst that had befallen her it struck me
still less as possible to meet her on the ground of condolence; and with
the sad appearance she wore to me what other ground was left? I lost
her, but I caught my train. In truth she was so changed that one hated
to see it; and now that she was in charitable hands one didn't feel
compelled to make great efforts. I had studied her face for a particular
beauty; I had lived with that beauty and reproduced it; but I knew what
belonged to my trade well enough to be sure it was gone for ever.

CHAPTER XII

I was soon called back to Folkestone; but Mrs. Meldrum and her young
friend had already left England, finding to that end every convenience on
the spot and not having had to come up to town. My thoughts however were
so painfully engaged there that I should in any case have had little
attention for them: the event occurred that was to bring my series of
visits to a close. When this high tide had ebbed I returned to America
and to my interrupted work, which had opened out on such a scale that,
with a deep plunge into a great chance, I was three good years in rising
again to the surface. There are nymphs and naiads moreover in the
American depths: they may have had something to do with the duration of
my dive. I mention them to account for a grave misdemeanor--the fact
that after the first year I rudely neglected Mrs. Meldrum. She had
written to me from Florence after my mother's death and had mentioned in
a postscript that in our young lady's calculations the lowest figures
were now Italian counts. This was a good omen, and if in subsequent
letters there was no news of a sequel I was content to accept small
things and to believe that grave tidings, should there be any, would come
to me in due course. The gravity of what might happen to a featherweight
became indeed with time and distance less appreciable, and I was not
without an impression that Mrs. Meldrum, whose sense of proportion was
not the least of her merits, had no idea of boring the world with the ups
and downs of her pensioner. The poor girl grew dusky and dim, a small
fitful memory, a regret tempered by the comfortable consciousness of how
kind Mrs. Meldrum would always be to her. I was professionally more
preoccupied than I had ever been, and I had swarms of pretty faces in my
eyes an