and I know exactly what to do. You shall row us out in the morning, and, while I'm bathing, you can hire a bicycle, and in the afternoon we can go for a long walk over the cliffs, or on the sands, or for a drive, and at night we can go to the theatre, or promenade on the new pier where there's lots of girls and fellows courting like us, and we can go for lovely excursions to Margate and the Hall by the Sea, and we can go to Pegwell Bay and have tea with shrimps, and we can go▬▬

"

The painter listened, and his eyeballs dilated with horror.

CHAPTER IV.

A COCKNEY COURTSHIP.

THE subtly pertinacious Eliza carried out her programme almost to the letter. A proposal that he should return to look after the business, leaving his mother under the care of Eliza, brought down on Jack's head a maternal wail to the effect that her own flesh and blood was deserting her in her illness. Mrs. Dawe, with sublime self-abnegation, managed to efface herself for the most part, probably with a sympathetic remembrance of her own goings-on in the halcyon days of courtship. She often pleaded fatigue and old bones when Eliza wished to go on an excursion, and till their return remained on the sands profuse of admiration of the blackened minstrels, if sparing of money.

Jack first resisted Eliza's monopolisation of his attentions and the arrangements she proposed, then grew tired of struggling, and ended by proving himself in the wrong. Each stage of thought, unconsciously changing into the next, summed itself up by a formula which sprang like a wise Minerva out of Jack's head at the stimulus of an appropriate simile.

On the second day Eliza dragged him to Pegwell Bay, before he had time to recover from the shock of her arrival. As he had determined not to go, he went. The endearments of the route, combined with Eliza's lavish admiration of the scenery, as gushing as if Nature were a third-rate Academy picture, completely destroyed whatever beauty it might have possessed for the finer eye of the painter.

"You do what you like with me," he groaned, apostrophising Eliza and rejecting the plate of shrimps. My will, like yon strong wave, advances white-crested, threatening, and dashes itself to pieces on the first rock."

"Oh, how lovely !" exclaimed his fiancée. "It's as good as anything in the London Reader. But do have a shrimp. Here's a nice fat one I've picked off the beard and the tail for you. There, you must have it !" and she tried to cram it into his mouth. "Thus have I mutilated myself," spluttered Jack. It was while he was promenading on the pier with Eliza hanging

on his arm that calmness once more entered his soul. Immersed in the massive harmony of "The Lost Chord," he forgot temporarily his chattering companion. What music began, a cork completed. Floating from the moonlit water on one side of the pier across the dark masses underneath, and emerging into the sparkling waves on the other side, it encouraged him to drift passively with a similar hope of final emergence.

Henceforth, the torture of this pleasure-week grew less exquisite in proportion as he succeeded in projecting his astral spirit, if not his astral body, into space other than that which surrounded him. This feat was not difficult to one who could utilise the most ordinary remark or object as a spring-board to the empyrean.

Another escape from the apparent blind alley of Eliza's presence he found in the objective pursuit of rowing. Mrs. Dawe professed fears of drowning or, what was worse, sea-sickness. Eliza, who alone accompanied him, he taught to steer, and the novelty, combined with the perils of the occupation, kept her pretty quiet.

The lovers were blessed with the most marvellous weather, whose fairness reached its climax on the last day but one of their holiday. The azure of the sky was tenderly set off by golden-edged dots of white clouds, and the boat glided gently over small diamondcrested waves in a far-flashing track of shimmering light. The faint splash of Jack's oars as they lazily dipped into the beautiful blue water suddenly ceased, and Eliza, who was unnecessarily busy at the tiller, turning round found that he had fallen back upon his oars in meditation. Soft currents of air brought to him a message of delicious peace and wafted to his ears a vague, murmurous harmony of sweet, far-off sounds that filled him with pleasurable sadness. Once more the old weak craving for rest gently stirred his soul under the brooding tranquillity of the sleeping sky. Eliza, too, was silent. She did not feel the tender melancholy that affected Jack; to her the scene was gay and her emotion was one of pure delight, polishing her faculties to a brightness like that of Nature herself.

"Why do we examine our sorrows under a microscope," Jack asked himself, "or shrink at each prick of a rose's thorn, neglecting the flower? The girl is right. I have promised to marry her in two months. Having accepted this situation, it is just that I should take all its consequences, all its responsibilities. Do I not now enjoy a balsamic calm? If I enjoy the blessings of my position, what right have I to complain of its evils? Poor Eliza ! Her fate is indeed cruel! What a travesty I have caused of the golden season of Light and Love! No wonder that the tender lambent glory, which should play in the dark eyes of one who stands with reluctant feet where the brook and river meet, occasionally changes into the masterful flash which awes me when :

Mon génie étonné tremble devant le sien." "Look out, Jack!" screamed Eliza. "Pull away for your life."

Jack looked up quickly and smiled.

"There's no danger, my dear child !" he said kindly. “It's too far off."

For there came dashing into the shimmering light, and cutting it furiously and sending the diamond drops flying all round it, a huge steamer with a great puffing and snorting and vomiting of dark smoke. Standing out clear-cut in the transparent air, with rude, savage impulse it cleft its way through the huge, watery masses, ploughing up the lazy, soft-curling waves in fierce, barbaric splendour, and communicating to them its own fiery restlessness. The sadness of the tender calm of the azure sky was dispelled by the mighty vitality of the monster, that brought a picturesque roughness into the scene, and a suggestion of healthy life and honest work; of life that does its duty without weak questionings, and vain, querulous repinings.

Drawn by the magnetic attraction inherent in all manifestations of gigantic force, the lovers' eyes followed it till it diminished to a speck. On went the glorious vessel in a beautiful straight line, without the slightest apparent pitching. On, as with a rude, conscious life. On, rejoicing in the wild exercise of its own strength. The great wheel went round, and the white water flashed in the sun, and the delicate machinery throbbed with Titanic throes.

Eliza shuddered.

"Didn't the people look sick!" she exclaimed.

Jack made no reply; but, his heart throbbing with the hurtling of mighty thoughts, he dashed his oars into the water and rowed furiously along.

"Why

"Is not that a nobler type of life? ran his reflections. have I deserted my post? I, who once left my books, moved by the passionate impulse I now again feel to guide my country--in the old paths, by the old stars, that it be not lost in the dim ways of the unknown to which I see it hastening. Was it to loll here that I exchanged Wordsworth and Plato for Statistics and Blue Books? Shame on me to have turned aside from the holy vision of the perfect state, too soon, too weakly abandoning it as a mirage!

He began to sketch out anew an ideal commonwealth.

A shriek of Eliza, followed by a crash that threw them both on their backs, put an end to the reverie of the imaginative painter. The incompetent hand at the helm had allowed the boat to strike heavily on a miniature reef, bordering part of the coast of Thanet. A plank was staved in and admitted the water slowly.

Eliza was the first to struggle to her feet, and, seeing that there was no danger, she exclaimed:

"Good-bye, my love. We are lost! But, thank God, we shall die together."

66 Cling to me. I can swim," cried Jack, rising. "Keep nothing but your head above water, and commend yourself to God whowhy, we can walk to shore!"

Impossible!" said Eliza. "I should be sure to slip, and all my petticoats would get wet.”

"Nonsense! Lift them up."

66 Oh, Jack, I told you once before not to be so vulgar. Don't you see that party of tourists on the sands looking at us? I wonder where we are!"

66 That queer wooden pier a long way to the right must belong to Broadstairs," replied Jack. "But how are you to get on shore,

then?"

"You must carry me," said Eliza decisively. "I am as light as a feather!"

Jack looked despairingly at the long expanse of black, slimy, moss-covered, slippery rocks whose frequent clefts and interstices held pools of salt water, and whose jagged slopes required the foot of a chamois.

Then, smiling mournfully, he repeated:

"It is just that I should take all the consequences of the position."

"Well, make haste then!" cried Eliza sharply, "for the water is getting up to my ankles. My best boots are spoiled, and--”

Jack seized her manfully by the waist, lifted her up as high as he could and stepped upon the reef. With infinite patience and trouble he picked his tired way towards the shore, his tendencies to reverie being all but destroyed by the dangers of the path and the heavy weight of Eliza. Yet, when he had accomplished half the task safely, he found himself inquiring whether in politics, too, his powers, hitherto inadequately tried, might not rise to a perilous occasion, and whether marriage, with the consequent sobering weight of a wife, and the responsibility of acting for the happiness of two, might not be the best condition for a man. A sudden slip and a convulsive grasp on his throat warned him that analogies were dangerous. Recovering himself, in a very muddy condition as to his extremities and covered with black tangled seaweed, he proceeded with greater caution, planting his feet firmly, and steadying himself at each step. To add to his difficulties the wind had by this time freshened, and blew with some force against him in a horizontal direction; nor did the heat of the sun decrease his discomfort.

At last, to his delight, a young man, who had been watching them, set forwards to meet them, just about the time that Eliza's loveliness began to be visible to a naked eye on shore. With her own permission-he had white teeth and a beautiful blond mousache-Eliza was transferred to his fresher muscles, and in a few minutes the three were safe on the sands. The chivalrous rescuer then left them, gracefully lifting his hat to Eliza, who gave him a fascinating smile of thanks. He only moved a few feet off, however, and remained scrutinising Jack's face with a puzzled air.

Jack sat down on the shore, panting for breath and aching in all his limbs, which were covered with perspiration so profuse that his clothes stuck to him.

"The boat!” cried Eliza, "we shall have to pay for it as it is! It must be towed in !"

A sudden startled look flashed into Jack's eyes; his brow grew dark.

"Let it drift!" he replied moodily.

"But, Jack," exclaimed Eliza in horrified admiration of a recklessness that put her lover on the level of the Life-Guardsman of feminine fiction, "it'll ruin you!"

"Ruin!" he laughed bitterly and scornfully.

it," he burst forth, “if I——”

"It wasn't mine," whimpered Eliza.

it the other way."

66

"Whose fault is

"I'm sure I tried to turn

No, no; it wasn't yours," said Jack kindly. Then he added grimly: "If I put an ignorant man at the helm, after giving him none but the slightest instruction in steering, knowing, too, that he is reckless and loves to steer amid rocks, who can wonder if destruction ensue? And whose is the fault, whose is

The last two words were cut off in a singular manner. The world is aware that the Parcæ are not above playing a prank now and again, and holding their sides as they think of the grimly fantastic results of their little joke. Waggish old maids!

It has been already remarked that Jack's clothes stuck to him. But an exception must now be made. His straw hat did not. That light and frisky article having politely waited to almost the termination of its owner's speech, now bounded off on an aërial voyage, upborne by a puff of wind that blew it in the direction of Ramsgate. For a moment Jack gazed after it in mute horror. No one of the small crowd of holiday makers, that had gathered round, stirred. An anticipatory grin spread over every face. Starting up, Jack walked after it in leisurely pursuit, for it was nearing the ground. It rested. He stooped to pick it up, and it flew from between his fingers, and the irrepressible laughter of the group reached his ears. Reddening indignantly, he quickened his pace to a run and panted along the hot sands. But the hat could have given odds to Atalanta, and, like Goldsmith's horizon, fled as he pursued.

"It is thus," he thought bitterly, "that the philosopher pursues the Ideal amid the laughter of the jeering crowd."

By this time the hat had reached a point where the cliffs stretched out, forming a small headland, and Jack hoped that here its career would be ruthlessly barred. Alas! it was not so. Skirting dexterously around the base of the cliff it was lost to view on the other side. Jack paused for breath and looked back. The group was barely visible in the distance.

"Shall I give up?" he muttered. But what do I say? Give up on the very day when I have determined no longer to be conquered by difficulties, when I have found my long-lost resolution. And shall I not find my hat? On, man; on!"

He turned the corner.

We are often told that if we follow our noses we shall be right. Jack did follow his nose, which followed his hat, and the pursuit led him into one of the oddest positions imaginable, and resulted