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There was a Being whom my spirit oft

Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft,

In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn,

Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn,

Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves

Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves

Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor

Paved her light steps;—on an imagined shore

Under the grey beak of some promontory

She met me, robed in such exceeding glory,

That I beheld her not

Epipsychidion

One afternoon in late September he made his way alone across the hills. Clouds blew thinly over a sky of watery blue, driven by an idle wind the roses had left behind. It seemed a day strayed from out the summer that now found itself, thrilled and a little confused, in the path of autumn—and summer had sent forth this soft wind to bring it back to the fold.

The 'Crack' was always near at hand on such a day, and Paul slipped in without the least difficulty. He found himself in a valley of the Blue Mountains hitherto unknown, and, so wandering, came presently to a bend of the river where the sand stretched smooth and inviting.

For a moment he stopped to watch the slanting waves and listen, when to his sudden amazement he saw upon the shore, half concealed by the reeds near the bank—a human figure. A second glance showed him that it was the figure of a young girl, lying there in the sun, her bare feet just beyond reach of the waves, and her yellow hair strewn about the face so as to screen it almost entirely from view. A white dress covered her body; she was slim, he saw, as a child. She was asleep.

Paul stood and stared.

'Shall I wake her?' was his first thought. But his second thought was truer: 'Can I help waking her?' And then a third came to him, subtle and inexplicable, yet scarcely shaping itself in actual language: 'Is she after all a stranger?'

Flying memories, half-formed, half-caught, ran curiously through his brain. What was it in the turn of the slender neck, in the lines of the little mouth, just visible where he stood, that seemed familiar? Did he not detect upon that graceful figure lying motionless in repose some indefinable signature that recalled his outer life? Or was it merely that fancy played tricks, and that he reconstructed a composite picture from the galleries of memory, with the myriad expression and fugitive magic of dream or picture—ideal figures he had conjured with in the past and set alive in some inner frame of his deepest thoughts? He was conscious of a delicious bewilderment. A singular emotion stirred in his heart. Yet the face and figure he sought utterly evaded him.

Then, the first sharp instinct to turn aside passed. He accepted the adventure. Stooping down for a stone, he flung it with a noisy splash into the river. The girl opened her eyes, threw her hair back in a cloud, and sat up.

At once a wave of invincible shyness descended upon Paul, rendering words or action impossible; he felt ridiculously embarrassed, and sought hurriedly in his mind for ways of escape. But, before any feasible plan for undoing what was already done suggested itself, he became aware of a very singular thing—the face of the girl was covered! He could not see it clearly. Something, veil-like and misty, hung before it so that his eyes could not focus properly upon the features. The recognition he had half anticipated, therefore, did not come.

And this helped to restore his composure. It was, in any case, futile to pretend he did not see her. For one thing, he realised that she was staring at him just as hard as he was staring at her. The very next instant she rose and came across the hot sand towards him, her hair flying loose, and both hands outstretched by way of greeting. Again, the half-recognition that refused to complete itself swept j confusingly over him.

But this spontaneous and unexpected action had an immediate effect upon him of another kind. His embarrassment vanished. What she did seemed altogether right and natural, and the beauty of the girl drove all minor emotions from his mind. His whole being rose in a wave of unaffected delight, and almost before he was aware of it, he had stepped forward and caught both her hands in his own.

This strange golden happiness at first troubled his speech.

'But surely I know you!' he cried. 'If only I could see your face!'

'You ought to know me,' she replied at once with a laugh as of old acquaintance, 'for you have. called for me often enough, I'm sure!' Her voice was soft; curiously familiar accents rang in it; yet, as with the face, he knew not whose it was.

She looked up at him, and though he could not make out the features, he discerned the expression they wore—an expression of peace and confidence. The girl trusted him delightfully.

'Then what hides you from me?' he insisted.

She answered him so low that he hardly caught the words. Certainly, at the moment he did not understand them, for happiness still confused him. 'The body,' she murmured; 'the veil of the body.'

She returned the firm and equal pressure of his hands, and allowed him to draw her close. Their faces approached, and he looked searchingly down upon her, trying to pierce the veil in vain. The hot sunshine fell in a blaze upon their uncovered heads. The next moment the girl raised her lips to his, and almost before he knew it they had kissed.

Yet that kiss seemed the most natural thing in the world; at a stroke it killed the last vestige of shyness. Youth ran in his veins like fire.

'Now, tell me exactly who you are, please,' he cried, standing back a little for an inspection, but still holding her hands. They swung out at arm's length like children.

'I think first you should tell me who you are,' she laughed. 'I want to be a mystery a little longer. It's so much more interesting!'

Leaning backwards with her hair tumbling down her neck, she looked at him out of eyes that he half imagined, half knew. Laughter and gentleness played over her like sunlight. Standing there, framed against the reeds of the river bank, with the blue waters behind and the wind and sky about her head, Paul thought that never till this moment had he understood the whole magic of a woman's beauty. Yet at the same time he somehow divined that she was as much child as woman, and that something of eternal youthfulness mingled exquisitely with her suggestion of maturity.

'Of course,' he laughed in return, like a boy in mid-mischief, 'that's your privilege, isn't it? My name, then, is '

But there he stuck fast. It seemed so foolish to give the name he owned in that other tinsel world; it was merely a disguise like a frock-coat or evening dress, or the absurd uniform he had once assumed to deceive the children with. He almost felt ashamed of the name he was known by in that world!

'Well?' she asked slyly, 'and have you forgotten it quite? '

'I'm the Man who saw the Wind, for one thing,' he said at length; 'and, after that, well—I suppose I'm the man who's been looking for you without knowing it all his life! Now do you know me?' he concluded triumphantly.

'You foolish creature! Of course I know you!'

She came closer; the sunshine and the odour of the flowers seemed to come with her. 'It's you who couldn't find me! I've been waiting for you to claim me ever since—either of us can remember.'

A queer, faint rush of memory rose upon him from the depths—and was gone. For an instant it seemed that her face half cleared.

'Then, in the name of beauty,' he cried, starting forward, 'why can't I see your face and eyes? Why do I only see you partly?'

She hesitated an instant and drew back; she lowered her eyes—he felt that—and the voice dropped very low again as she answered: 'Because, as yet, you only know me—partly.'

'As through a glass, darkly, you mean?' he said, half grave, half laughing.

The girl took both his hands and pressed them silently for a moment.

'When you know me as I know you,' she whispered softly, 'then—we shall know one another—see one another—face to face. But even now, in these few minutes, you have come to know me better than you ever did before. And that is something, isn't it?'

She moved quite close, passing her hands down his bronzed cheeks and shaking his head playfully as one might do to a loved child.

'You take my breath away!' gasped the delighted man, too bewildered in his new happiness to let the strangeness of her words perplex him long. 'But, tell me again,' he added, slowly releasing himself, 'how it is that you know me so well? Tell me again and again!'

She replied demurely, standing before him like a teacher before a backward pupil. 'Because I have always watched, studied, and loved you—from within yourself. It was not my fault that you failed to know me when I spoke. Perhaps, even now, you would not have found me unless—in certain ways—through the children—you had begun to come into your own '

Paul interrupted her, taking her in his arms, while she made no effort to escape, but only laughed. 'And I'll take good care I never lose you again after this! 'he cried.

'You know, I wasn't really asleep just now on the sand,' she told him a little later. 'I heard you coming all the time; only I wanted to see if you would pass me by as you always did before.'

'It's very odd and very wonderful,' he said, 'but I never noticed you till to-day.'

'And very natural,' she added under her breath, so low that he did not hear.

And Paul, moving beside her, murmured in his beard, 'If she's not my Ideal, set mysteriously somehow into the framework of one I already love—I swear I don't know who she is!'

They made their way along the sandy shores of the river, the waves breaking at their feet, the wind singing among the reeds; never had the sunlight seemed so brilliant, the day so wonderful and kind. All nature helped them; playing their great game as if it was the only game worth playing in the whole world—the game loved from one eternity to another.

'So the children have told you about me, have they?' he whispered into the ear that came just level with his lips.

'And all you love, as well. Your dreams and thoughts more than anything else—especially your thoughts. You must be very careful with those; they mould me; they make me what I am. If you didn't think nicely of me—verynicelyindeed—'

'But I shall always think nicely, beautifully, of you,' he broke in eagerly, not noticing the familiar touch of language.

'You have so far, at any rate,' she replied, 'for the yearning and desire of your imagination have created me afresh.' And he discerned the smile upon her veiled face as one may see the sun only through troubled glass, yet know its warmth and brilliance.

'Then it is because you are part and parcel of my inner self that you seem so real and intimate and—true?' he asked passionately.

'Of course. I am in your very blood; I beat in your heart; I understand your every passion and emotion, because I am present at their birth. The most fleeting of your dreams finds its reflection in me; your spirit's faintest aspiration runs through me like a trumpet call; and, now that you have found me, we need never, we can never, separate!'

The passion of her words broke over his heart like a wave. He felt himself trembling.

'But it is all so swift and wonderful that it makes me almost afraid—afraid it cannot last,' he objected, knowing all the time that his words were but a common device to make his pleasure the more real.

'If only, oh, if only I could carry you away with

me into that outer world!'

She laughed deliciously in his face. 'It is from that very "outer world "that you have carried me-in here she told him softly, 'for I am always with you.' And with the words came that fugitive trick of voice and gesture that made him certain he knew her—then was gone again. 'In the house with your sister and the children,' she continued; 'when you write your Aventures and your verses; in your daily round of duties, small and great; and when you lie down at night—ah 'especially then—I curl up beside you in your heart, and fly with you through all your funny dreamland, and wake your dear eyes with a kiss so soft you never know it. In your early morning rambles, as in your reveries of the dusk, '. never leave you—because I cannot. All day long I am beside you, though you little realise my presence. I share half your pleasures and all your pains. And in return you hand over to me half that soul whose unuttered prayers have thus created me afresh for your salvation.'

'But it must be my own voice speaking,' he cried inwardly, satisfied and happy beyond belief. 'It is the words of my own thoughts that I hear!'

'Because I am your own thoughts speaking,' sh« replied instantly, as though he had uttered aloud. 'I lie, you see, behind your inmost thoughts!'

They walked through sunny meadows, picking their way among islands of wild flowers. There was no sound but the murmur of wind and river, and the singing of birds. Fleecy clouds, here and there in the blue, hung cool and white, watching them. The whole world, Paul felt, listened without shyness.

'And so it is that you love me without shyness,' she went on, marvellously linking in with his thought; 'I am intimate with you as your own soul, and our relations are pure with the purity that was before man. There can be no secrets between us, or possibility of secrets, for your most hidden dreams are also mine. So mingled with your ultimate being am I, in fact, that sometimes you dare not recognise me as separate, and all that appears on the surface of your dear mind must first filter through myself. Why!' she cried, with a sudden rush of mischievous laughter, 'I even know what you are made of; why your queer heart has never been able to satisfy itself—to "grow-up," as you call it; and all about this endless desire you have to find God, which is really nothing but the search to find your true inner Self.'

'Tell me! tell me!' he cried.

'Besides the sun,' she went on with a strange swiftness of words, 'there's the wind and the rain in you; yes, and moon and stars as well. That's why the fire and restlessness of the imagination for ever tear you. No mere form of expression can ever satisfy that, but only increase it; for it means your desire to know reality, to know beauty, to know your own soul; to know—God! Your blood has kinship with those tides that flow through all space, even to the gates of the stars; dawns and; sunsets, moonrise and meteors haunt your thoughts with their magic lights; wild flowers of the fields? and hillside nod beside you while you sleep; and the winds, laughing and sighing, lift your dreams? upon vast wings and flash with them beyond the edges of the universe!'

'Stop,' he cried with passion, 'you are telling all my secrets.'

'I am telling them only to myself,' she laughed, 'and therefore to you. For I know all the fevers of your soul. The wilderness calls you and the great woods. You are haunted by the faces of the world's forgotten places. Your imagination plays with the| lightning about the mountain tops, and seeks primeval forests and the shores of desolate seas. . . .'

Paul listened spellbound while she put some of the most intangible of his fancies into the language of poetry. Yet she spoke with the quiet simplicity of true things. The man felt his soul shake with delight to hear her. Again and again, while she spoke, the feeling came to him that in another moment her face must clear and he would know her; yet the actual second of recognition never appeared. The girl's true identity continued to evade him. The enticing uncertainty added enormously to her charm. It evoked in him even the sense of worship.

'And this shall be the earnest of our ideal companionship,' she whispered, holding up a spray of leaves which she proceeded to fasten into the buttonhole of his coat; 'the symbol by which you shall always know me—the sign of my presence in your heart.'

The top of her head, as she bent over the task, was on a level with his lips, and when he stooped to kiss it the perfumes of the earth—flowers, trees, wind, water—rose about her like a cloud. Her hair was hot with sunshine, all silken with the air of summer. They were one being, growing out of the earth that he loved—the old, magical, beautiful earth that fed so great a part of his secret life from perennial springs.

As she drew away again from his caress he glanced down and saw that what she had pinned into his coat was a little cluster of leaves from the branch of a silver birch tree.

'Then I, too, shall give you a sign,' he said, 'that shall mean the same as yours.' And he picked a twig of pine needles from a tree beside them and twined it through a coil of her hair. Then, seizing her hands, he swung her round in a dance till they fell upon the river bank at last, tired out, and slept the sleep of children.

And after that, for a whole day it seemed, they wandered through this summer landscape, following the river to its source in the mountains, and then descending on the farther side to the shores of a blue-rimmed sea.

'There are the ships,' she cried, pointing to the shining expanse of water; 'and, see, there is our ship coming for us.'

And as she stood there, laughing with excitement like a child, a barque with painted figure-head and I brown sails yielding to the wind, came towards them! over the waves, the bales of fruit upon her decks 'scenting the air, the smell of rope and tar and salty f wood enticing them to distance and adventure, Through the cordage the very sound of the wind I called to them to be off.

'So at last we start upon our long, long voyage together,' she said mysteriously, blushing with pleasure, and leading him down towards the ship.

'And where are we to sail to?' he asked; for the flap of the sails and the waves beating against the sides made resistance impossible. The sea-smells were in his nostrils. He glanced down at the veiled face beside him.

'First to the Islands of the Night,' she whispered so low that not even the wind could carry it away; 'for there we shall be alone.'

'And then?'

'And then to the Islands of Delight,' she murmured more softly still; 'for there we shall find the lost children of the world—our children, and so be happy with them ever after, like the people in the fairy tales.'

With something like a shock he realised that some one else was walking beside him, talking of things that were real in a very different sense. He had been out walking longer than he knew, and had reached the house again. The autumnal mist already drew its gauze curtains about the old building. The smoke rose in straight lines from the chimneys, melting into dusk. That other place of sunshine and flowers had faded—sea, ship, islands, had all sunk beneath the depths within him. And this other person had been saying things for some minutes. . . .

'I don't believe you've been listening to a single word, Paul. You stand there with your eyes fixed on vacancy, and only nod your head and grunt.'

'I assure you, Margaret, dear,' he stammered, coming to the surface as from a long swim under water, 'I rarely miss anything you say. Only the Crack came so very suddenly. You were saying that Dick's niece was coming to us—Joan—er—Thingumybob, and—'

'So you heard some of it,' she laughed quietly, relenting. 'And I hope the Crack you speak about is in your head, not in mine.'

'It's everywhere,' he said with his grave humour.

'That's the trouble, you see; one never knows—'

Then, seeing that she was looking anxiously at the walls of the house and at the roof, he dropped his teasing and came back to solid earth again. 'And how soon do you expect her?' he asked in his most practical voice. 'When does she arrive upon the scene?'

'Why, Paul, I've already told you twice! You really are getting more absent-minded every day. Joan comes to-morrow, or the day after—she's to telegraph which—and stays here for as long as she can manage—a fortnight or so, I expect. She works herself to death, I believe, in town with those poor children, and I want her to get a real rest before she goes back.'

'Waifs, aren't they?' he asked, picking up the thread of the discourse like a thing heard in a dream, 'lost children of the slums?'

'Yes. You'll see them for yourself probably, as she has some of them down usually for a day in the country. One can be of use in that way—and it's so nice to help. Dick, you know, was absorbed in the scheme. You will help, won't you, when the time comes?'

He promised; and they went in together to tea.