That afternoon Pellet and I, like two assistants in a furnishing-house, unrolled carpets and stretched them along the floors before the critical gaze of my mother and Julia.  We unpacked chairs and tables, scanning anxiously for damages on the polished wood, and setting them one after another in a row against the walls.  I went about as in some dream.  The house commanded a splendid view of the whole group of the Channel Islands, and the rocky islets innumerable strewed about the sea.  The afternoon sun was shining full upon Sark, and whenever I looked through the window I could see the cliffs of the Havre Gosselin, purple in the distance, with a silver thread of foam at their foot.  No wonder that my thoughts wandered, and the words my mother and Julia were speaking went in at one ear and out at the other.  Certainly I was dreaming; but which part was the dream?

“I don’t believe he cares a straw about the carpets!” exclaimed Julia, in a disappointed tone.

“I do indeed, dear Julia,” I said, bringing myself back to the carpets.  Here I had been obliged to give in to Julia’s taste.  She had set her mind upon having flowers in her drawing-room carpet, and there they were, large garlands of bright-colored blossoms, very gay, and, as I ventured to remark to myself, very gaudy.

“You like it better than you did in the pattern?” she asked, anxiously.

I did not like it one whit better, but I should have been a brute if I had said so.  She was gazing at it and me with so troubled an expression, that I felt it necessary to set her mind at ease.

“It is certainly handsomer than the pattern?” I said, regarding it attentively; “very much handsomer.”

“You like it better than the plain thing you chose at first?” pursued Julia.

I was about to be hunted into a corner, and forced into denying my own taste—­a process almost more painful than denying one’s faith—­when my mother came to my rescue.  She could read us both as an open book, and knew the precise moment to come between us.

“Julia, my love,” she said, “remember that we wish to show Martin those patterns while it is daylight.  To-morrow is Sunday, you know.”

A little tinge of color crept over Julia’s tintless face as she told Pellet he might go.  I almost wished that I might be dismissed too; but it was only a vague, wordless wish.  We then drew near to the window, from which we could see Sark so clearly, and Julia drew out of her pocket a very large envelope, which was bursting with its contents.

They were small scraps of white silk and white satin.  I took them mechanically into my hand, and could not help admiring the pure, lustrous, glossy beauty of them.  I passed my fingers over them softly.  There was something in the sight of them that moved me, as if they were fragments of the shining garments of some vision, which in times gone by, when I was much younger, had now and then floated before my fancy.  I did not know any one lovely enough to wear raiment of glistening white like these, unless—­unless—.  A passing glimpse of the pure white face, and glossy hair, and deep gray eyes of my Sark patient flashed across me.