scene after scene; he saw primroses in its hand, and the pale spring blue above it; he recalled it standing tense and still with blanched cheek and fixed appealing eye, while all round the June woods murmured in the breeze; he surrounded it in imagination with the pomp and circumstance of the stage, and realised it as a centre of emotion to thousands.  And then from memories he would pass on to speculations, from the scenes he knew to those he could only guess at, from the life of which he had seen a little to the larger and unexplored life beyond.

And so the days went on, and though he was impatient and restless, yet indoors his work was congenial to him, and out of doors the sun was bright, and all the while a certain little god lay hidden, speaking no articulate word, but waiting with a mischievous patience for the final overthrow of one more poor mortal.

At last the old postmistress, whom he had almost come to regard as cherishing a personal grudge against him, ceased to repulse him, and, after his seven years of famine, the years of abundance set in.  For the space of three weeks letters from Venice lay waiting for him almost every alternate morning, and the heathery slopes between the farm and the village grew familiar with the spectacle of a tall thin man in a rough tweed suit struggling, as he walked, with sheets of foreign paper which the wind was doing its best to filch away from him.

The following extracts from these letters contain such portions of them as are necessary to our subject:—­

* * * * *

’CASA MINGHETTI 2, GRAND CANAL,

’VENICE, August 6.

’MY DEAR EUSTACE—­I can only write you a very scrappy letter to-day, for we are just settling into our apartment, and the rooms are strewn in the most distracting way with boxes, books, and garments; while my maid, Felicie, and the old Italian woman, Caterina, who is to cook and manage for us, seem to be able to do nothing—­not even to put a chair straight, or order some bread to keep us from starving—­without consulting me.  Paul, taking advantage of a husband’s prerogative, has gone off to flaner on the Piazza, while his women-folk make life tolerable at home; which is a very unfair and spiteful version of his proceedings, for he has really gone as much on my business as on his own.  I sent him—­feeling his look of misery, as he sat on a packing-case in the middle of this chaos, terribly on my mind—­to see if he could find the English consul (whom he knows a little), and discover from him, if possible, where your friends are.  It is strange, as you say, that Miss Bretherton should not have written to me; but I incline to put it down to our old Jacques at home, who is getting more and more imbecile with the weight of years and infirmities, and is quite capable of forwarding to us all the letters which are not worth posting, and leaving all the important ones piled up in the hall to await our return.  It is provoking, for, if the Bretherton party are not going to stay long in Venice, we may easily spend all our time in looking for each other; which will, indeed, be a lame and impotent conclusion.  However, I have hopes of Paul’s cleverness.