Gradually, in the warmth of the sunlight, I grew drowsy, and the beautiful, breaking sea, and the harsh crying of the gulls, soothed me and seemed to build up an enchanted world about me, where I was shut in with the romance of the tale I was reading. By and by, after perhaps two hours, I closed my book, though still keeping my finger in the place. I reflected that nobody up at the field had spent such an afternoon as I had spent, and I compared my spiritual pleasure with their rough commonplace pleasures, and the extraordinary superiority of my soul became immediately apparent. Then my thoughts turned to the story I had been reading. My sympathies were entirely enlisted by Lady Constantine and her youthful astronomer, but particularly by Lady Constantine. Even the fact that she was so much older than her lover appealed to me. Her gentleness; her intense femininity; her dark eyes; the softness of her skin; the perfume of her hair; and the delight of her caresses――these were present to me vividly, almost physically, and I rejoiced in the love-scenes in the tower with a frank and innocent sensuality, filling in the picture, where it was blurred or vague, from my own imaginings. CHAPTER XVII During that last week of August, after the Dales had left, “I wandered lonely as a cloud.” Up to the eve of their departure I had been happier than I had ever been in my life, but as soon as they were gone I became a prey to sentimental regret. If Katherine had cared for me as I cared for her I might have found more comfort; but she didn’t, and I was perfectly aware of the fact. Mingled with it all was an increasing dread of the new existence I already saw opening out before me. I distrusted it: I had, indeed, that instinctive distrust of life itself, which contemplates anything unknown with uneasiness, and clings with passion to familiar faces and things. When the day of my departure, a Saturday, came round, and I saw my box all corded and ready in the hall, I felt extremely depressed. Now that I had said good-bye to Mrs. Carroll it was as if I had cut myself completely adrift from the past, and yet I believe I should have been willing to go had I not been going to the McAllisters. The McAllisters were our relations; the only ones I knew of. Aunt Margaret was my father’s sister, and her husband kept a shop in a street called Cromac Street. I had never been to their house, but they had been down a good many times to visit us, and I did not care for them. There were four children, and I disliked them all, except George, the eldest; and I disliked Aunt Margaret in particular; while to Uncle George I was indifferent, seeing that he did not very much count one way or the other. But to live with them!...