d eye and soul of the man for whom Fate had borrowed Ixion's wheel.
He gazed until the poet in him sighed with pure pleasure; then came
forgetfulness; then, presently, he looked into his heart and began to
make a little song, amorous, quaint, and honey-sweet, just such a song
as in that full dawn of poesy Englishmen struck from the lyre and
thought naught of it. His lips did not move; had he spoken, at the sound
of his own voice the charm had cracked, the little lyric had shrunk away
before tragedy that was yet as fierce as it was profound, that had as
yet few other notes than those of primal pain.

With the final cadence, the last sugared word, the ivy sprays somewhat
darkened against the eastern sky. His fancy being yet aloft, he turned
that he might behold the light upon the downs, and then he saw Damaris
Sedley where she stood upon the lowest of the ruined steps, stiller than
the flower beside her, and with something rich and strange in her
bearing and her dress. Cloth of silver sheathed her body, while the
flowing sleeves that half revealed, half hid her white and rounded arms
were of silver tissue over watchet blue, and of watchet was the mantle
which she had let fall upon the step beside her. A net of wire of gold
crossing her hair that was but half confined, held high above her
forehead a golden star. In one hand she bore a silvered spear well
tipped with gold, the other she pressed above her heart. Her face was
pale and grave, her scarlet lip between her teeth, her dark eyes intent
upon the man before her.

Ferne sprang to his feet and started forward, very white, his arm
outstretched and trembling, crying to her if she were spirit merely. She
shook her head, regarding him gravely, her hand yet upon her heart. "I
attend the Queen upon her progress," she said. "This day at the Earl's
there is a great masque of Dian and her huntresses, satyrs, fauns, all
manner of sylvan folk. At last I might steal aside unmissed.... By the
favor of a friend I rode here through the quiet lanes, for I wished to
see you face to face, to speak to you--to you who gave me no answer when
I wrote, and wrote again!... I am weary with the joys of this day. May I
rest upon yonder seat?"

He moved backward before her, slowly, across the grass-plot to the bench
of stone, and she followed him. Their gaze met the while. There was no
wonder in his look, no consciousness of self in hers. In the spaces
beyond life their souls might meet thus; e