Woodseer answered:  ’My mother was a Glamorganshire woman.  My father, I know, walked up from Wales, mending boots on his road for a livelihood.  He is not a bad scholar, he knows Greek enough to like it.  He is a Dissenting preacher.  When I strike a truism, I ’ve a habit of scoring it to give him a peg or tuning-fork for one of his discourses.  He’s a man of talent; he taught himself, and he taught me more than I learnt at school.  He is a thinker in his way.  He loves Nature too.  I rather envy him in some respects.  He and I are hunters of Wisdom on different tracks; and he, as he says, “waits for me.”  He’s patient!’

Ah, and I wanted to ask you,’ Lord Fleetwood observed, bursting with it, ’I was puzzled by a name you write here and there near the end, and permit me to ask, it:  Carinthia!  It cannot be the country?  You write after, the name:  “A beautiful Gorgon—­a haggard Venus.”  It seized me.  I have had the face before my eyes ever since.  You must mean a woman.  I can’t be deceived in allusions to a woman:  they have heart in them.  You met her somewhere about Carinthia, and gave her the name?  You write —­may I refer to the book?’

He received the book and flew through the leaves: 

’Here—­“A panting look”:  you write again:  “A look of beaten flame:  a look of one who has run and at last beholds!” But that is a living face:  I see her!  Here again:  “From minute to minute she is the rock that loses the sun at night and reddens in the morning.”  You could not create an idea of a woman to move you like that.  No one could, I am certain of it, certain; if so, you ’re a wizard—­I swear you are.  But that’s a face high over beauty.  Just to know there is a woman like her, is an antidote.  You compare her to a rock.  Who would imagine a comparison of a woman to a rock!  But rock is the very picture of beautiful Gorgon, haggard Venus.  Tell me you met her, you saw her.  I want only to hear she lives, she is in the world.  Beautiful women compared to roses may whirl away with their handsome dragoons!  A pang from them is a thing to be ashamed of.  And there are men who trot about whining with it!  But a Carinthia makes pain honourable.  You have done what I thought impossible—­fused a woman’s face and grand scenery, to make them inseparable.  She might be wicked for me.  I should see a bright rim round hatred of her!—­the rock you describe.  I could endure horrors and not annihilate her!  I should think her sacred.’

Woodseer turned about to have a look at the man who was even quicker than he at realizing a person from a hint of description, and almost insanely extravagant in the pitch of the things he uttered to a stranger.  For himself, he was open with everybody, his philosophy not allowing that strangers existed on earth.  But the presence of a lord brought the conventional world to his feelings, though at the same time the title seemed to sanction the exceptional abruptness and wildness of this lord.  As for suspecting him to be mad, it would have been a common idea:  no stretching of speech or overstepping of social rules could waken a suspicion so spiritless in Woodseer.