e, if she should not object to be claimed, was as much a part of his
programme as were the exploits abroad and elsewhere that were to prelude
it. The very thoroughness of his intention for that advanced date
inclined him all the more readily to shelve the subject now. Her unhappy
caution to him not to write too soon was a comfortable license in his
present state of tension about sublime scientific things, which knew not
woman, nor her sacrifices, nor her fears. In truth he was not only too
young in years, but too literal, direct, and uncompromising in nature to
understand such a woman as Lady Constantine; and she suffered for that
limitation in him as it had been antecedently probable that she would do.

He stayed but a little time at Cape Town on this his first reconnoitring
journey; and on that account wrote to no one from the place. On leaving
he found there remained some weeks on his hands before he wished to cross
to America; and feeling an irrepressible desire for further studies in
navigation on shipboard, and under clear skies, he took the steamer for
Melbourne; returning thence in due time, and pursuing his journey to
America, where he landed at Boston.

Having at last had enough of great circles and other nautical reckonings,
and taking no interest in men or cities, this indefatigable scrutineer of
the universe went immediately on to Cambridge; and there, by the help of
an introduction he had brought from England, he revelled for a time in
the glories of the gigantic refractor (which he was permitted to use on
occasion), and in the pleasures of intercourse with the scientific group
around. This brought him on to the time of starting with the Transit
expedition, when he and his kind became lost to the eye of civilization
behind the horizon of the Pacific Ocean.

To speak of their doings on this pilgrimage, of ingress and egress, of
tangent and parallax, of external and internal contact, would avail
nothing. Is it not all written in the chronicles of the Astronomical
Society? More to the point will it be to mention that Viviette's letter
to Cambridge had been returned long before he reached that place, while
her missive to Marseilles was, of course, misdirected altogether. On
arriving in America, uncertain of an address in that country at which he
would stay long, Swithin wrote his first letter to his grandmother; and
in this he ordered that all communications should be sent to await him at
Cape Town, a