'Do you advocate marriage, then?' asked the poet, his blue eyes pensively interrogating the horizon. 'I say that, if you must make an ass of yourself at all, you should confine yourself within the narrowest possible limits.' 'Have you ever contemplated matrimony, Campbell?' 'It is the last thing I should contemplate for myself.' 'You have never yearned for a counter-soul?' 'I don't know what you mean, but I venture to say I never have,' I replied. 'But what would be folly in me would be philanthropy in you.' Jeff heaved a long sigh. 'Let me whisper you a secret. You know my papa made a fortune in the Crimean war. We had a contract to furnish the Russians with briar-wood pipes. Well, Russia is now on the eve of another conflict, and papa has sent me over to arrange the terms of another contract.' 'But what has this to do with your getting married?' 'Why, the person who manages the business on the Russian side is our old friend--the same who concluded the arrangements with papa twenty-five years ago. Our relations have always remained intimate and cordial. And immediately subsequent to the Russian war this commissioner married, and--had--oh!' The poet's voice died away; his eyes were fixed upon something a little farther along the beach. 'There! there!' he murmured. 'Oh! is she not--divine?' 'Ha! that is your pagan, is it?' 'Going out in a canoe,' continued Jeff. This young and strikingly handsome girl, of proportions almost statuesque, was not seen by me now for the first time. I had, in fact, noticed her shortly after my arrival in town, and had taken that pleasure in observing her which an artist feels for whatever is thoroughly picturesque. Who she was I knew no more than Jeff, and it was not to be expected that another man's admiration of her should be disagreeable to me; but some men are not any man, and I must admit that the revelation of her identity with the subject of Jeff's rhapsodies affected me unpleasantly. The girl's beauty, patent to me, was not of a type to reveal itself to every careless and uneducated eye. But I will not attempt to defend my feeling. I simply state it. The young lady took her seat in the canoe and grasped the paddle, and an elderly moustachioed gentleman pushed her off from shore. She was dressed in a rather remarkable bathing suit of black, slashed with scarlet; her round, firm arms were bare from the shoulder, and her legs from the knee; her hair was gathered up in the customary oilskin cap. With two or three vigorous strokes she sent her skiff well out beyond the crowd of bathers.