The young lord was at his elbow.  ’I can’t part with you.  Will you allow me?’

Woodseer was puzzled and had to say:  ‘If you wish it.’

’I do wish it:  an hour’s walk with you.  One does not meet a man like you every day.  I have to join a circle of mine in Baden, but there’s no hurry; I could be disengaged for a week.  And I have things to ask you, owing to my indiscretion—­but you have excused it.’

Woodseer turned for a farewell gaze at the great Watzmann, and saluted him.

‘Splendid,’ said Lord Fleetwood; ’but don’t clap names on the mountains.—­I saw written in your book:  “A text for Dada.”  You write:  “A despotism would procure a perfect solitude, but kill the ghost.”  That was my thought at the place where we were at the lake.  I had it.  Tell me—­though I could not have written it, and “ghost” is just the word, the exact word—­tell me, are you of Welsh blood?  “Dad” is good Welsh—­pronounce it hard.’

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