“Once in the night I woke—­a water-hen was crying, and in the moonlight a kingfisher flew across.  The wonder on the river—­the wonder of the moon and trees, the soft bright mist, the stillness!  It was like another world, peaceful, enchanted, far holier than ours.  It seemed like a vision of the thoughts that come to one—­how seldom! and go if one tries to grasp them.  Magic—­poetry-sacred!” He was silent a minute, then went on in a wistful voice:  “I looked at her, sleeping like a child, with her hair loose, and her lips apart, and I thought:  ’God do so to me, if ever I bring her pain!’ How was I to understand her? the mystery and innocence of her soul!  The river has had all my light and all my darkness, the happiest days, and the hours when I’ve despaired; and I like to think of it, for, you know, in time bitter memories fade, only the good remain....  Yet the good have their own pain, a different kind of aching, for we shall never get them back.  Sir,” he said, turning to me with a faint smile, “it’s no use crying over spilt milk....  In the neighbourhood of Lucy’s inn, the Rose and Maybush—­Can you imagine a prettier name?  I have been all over the world, and nowhere found names so pretty as in the English country.  There, too, every blade of grass; and flower, has a kind of pride about it; knows it will be cared for; and all the roads, trees, and cottages, seem to be certain that they will live for ever....  But I was going to tell you:  Half a mile from the inn was a quiet old house which we used to call the ’Convent’—­though I believe it was a farm.  We spent many afternoons there, trespassing in the orchard—­Eilie was fond of trespassing; if there were a long way round across somebody else’s property, she would always take it.  We spent our last afternoon in that orchard, lying in the long grass.  I was reading Childe Harold for the first time—­a wonderful, a memorable poem!  I was at that passage—­the bull-fight—­you remember: 

     “’Thrice sounds the clarion; lo! the signal falls,
       The din expands, and expectation mute’

—­“when suddenly Eilie said:  ‘Suppose I were to leave off loving you?’ It was as if some one had struck me in the face.  I jumped up, and tried to take her in my arms, but she slipped away; then she turned, and began laughing softly.  I laughed too.  I don’t know why....”

VI

“We went back to London the next day; we lived quite close to the school, and about five days a week Dalton came to dine with us.  He would have come every day, if he had not been the sort of man who refuses to consult his own pleasure.  We had more pupils than ever.  In my leisure I taught my wife to fence.  I have never seen any one so lithe and quick; or so beautiful as she looked in her fencing dress, with embroidered shoes.