'You have kept this promise, then.' Armorel welcomed her old friend with eyes of kindness and lips of smiles. 'Do you ever think of the promise that you broke? Effie, dear'--this young lady was the only other occupant of the room--'this is Mr. Roland Lee--my first friend and my first master. He knew me long ago, in Samson, in the days of which I have told you. We have memories of our own--memories such as make the old friendships impossible to be dissolved--whatever happens. Roland, you first put a pencil into my hand and taught me how to use it. In return, I used to play old-fashioned tunes in the evening. And you first put thoughts into my head. Before you came my head was filled with phantoms, which had neither voice nor shape. What am I to do now in return for such a gift?' She gave him both her hands, and her face was so glowing, her eyes so soft yet serious withal, her voice so full of tenderness--that the luckless painter stood confused and overwhelmed. How had he deserved such a reception? 'This evening,' she went on, 'we are going to talk about nobody but myself, and about nothing but my own affairs. Effie, you will be horribly bored. It is five years since I had such a chance. Because, my dear, though you have the best will in the world, and would talk to me about old times if you could, you did not know me when I lived on Samson in the Scilly Islands--and Roland did. That is, if he still remembers Samson.' 'I remember every day on Samson: every blade of grass on the island: every boulder and every crag.' 'And every talk we had in those days?--all the things you told me?' 'I remember, as well, a girl who has so changed, so grown----' 'So much the better. Then we can talk just as we used to do. I thought you would somehow remember the girl, Roland.' She looked up again, smiling. Then she hesitated, and went on slowly: 'Yet I was afraid, this morning, that you might have forgotten one of the two who wandered about the island together.' 'I could never forget you, Armorel.' 'I meant--the other--Roland.' He made no reply. In his evening dress--which was full of creases, as if it had not been put on for a very long time--he looked a little less forlorn than in the shabby old brown-velvet jacket; he had brushed his hair--nay, he had even had it cut and trimmed: but there still hung about him the look of waste: his eyes were melancholy: his bearing was dejected: he spoke with hesitation: he was even shy, like a schoolboy. Effie noted these things, and wondered. And she observed, besides, not only that his coat was creased, but that his shirt was frayed at the cuffs, and torn in the front. In fact, the young man, in dropping out of society, had, as a natural consequence, neglected his wardrobe and allowed his linen to run to seed unrebuked. Every man who has been a bachelor--most of us have--remembers how shirts behave when the eye of the master is once taken off them.