I looked at him.  He gave me a broad pleasant smile, without sign of a jest lurking in one corner.

The scene attracted me.  Laughing fishwife faces radiant with sea-bloom in among the weedy pier-piles, and sombre blue-cheeked officers of the douane, with their double row of buttons extending the breadth of their shoulders.  My father won Mr. Peterborough’s approval by declaring cigars which he might easily have passed.

’And now, sir,’—­he used the commanding unction of a lady’s doctor,—­’you to bed, and a short repose.  We will, if it pleases you, breakfast at eight.  I have a surprise for Mr. Richie.  We are about to beat the drum in the market-place, and sing out for echoes.’

‘Indeed, sir?’ said the simple man.

’I promise you we shall not disturb you, Mr. Peterborough.  You have reached that middle age, have you not, when sleep is, so to put it, your capital?  And your activity is the interest you draw from it to live on.  You have three good hours.  So, then, till we meet at the breakfast-table.’

My father’s first proceeding at the hotel was to examine the list of visitors.  He questioned one of the waiters aside, took information from him, and seized my arm rather tremulously, saying,

’They are here.  ’Tis as I expected.  And she is taking the morning breath of sea-air on the dunes.  Come, Richie, come.’

‘Who’s the “she"?’ I asked incuriously.

’Well, she is young, she is of high birth, she is charming.  We have a crowned head or two here.  I observe in you, Richie, an extraordinary deficiency of memory.  She has had an illness; Neptune speed her recovery!  Now for a turn at our German.  Die Strassen ruhen; die Stadt schlaft; aber dort, siehst Du, dort liegt das blaue Meer, das nimmer-schlafende!  She is gazing on it, and breathing it, Richie.  Ach! ihr jauchzende Seejungfern.  On my soul, I expect to see the very loveliest of her sex!

You must not be dismayed at pale cheeks-blasse Wangen.  Her illness has been alarming.  Why, this air is the top of life; it will, and it shall, revive her.  How will she address him?—­“Freund,” in my presence, perchance:  she has her invalid’s privilege.  “Theure Prinzessin” you might venture on.  No ice!  Ay, there she is!’

Solitary, on the long level of the sand-bank, I perceived a group that became discernible as three persons attached to an invalid’s chair, moving leisurely toward us.  I was in the state of mind between divination and doubt when the riddle is not impossible to read, would but the heart cease its hurry an instant; a tumbled sky where the break is coming.  It came.  The dear old days of my wanderings with Temple framed her face.  I knew her without need of pause or retrospect.  The crocus raising its cup pointed as when it pierced the earth, and the crocus stretched out on earth, wounded by frost, is the same flower.  The face was the same, though the features were changed.  Unaltered in expression, but wan, and the kind blue eyes large upon lean brows, her aspect was that of one who had been half caught away and still shook faintly in the relaxing invisible grasp.