Once I had a long conversation with my archbishop concerning the Book of Daniel, and were I to write out his lordship's erudition I might even be deemed sufficiently serious for a review in the _Church Gazette_. But looking back on this interview and judging it with all the impartiality of which my nature is capable, I cannot in truth say that I regard it as more serious than pretty Doris's fluent conversation, or the melancholy aspect of his lordship's cathedral as more serious than the pretty Southern sunlight glancing along the seashore, lighting up the painted houses, and causing Doris to open her parasol. What a splendid article I might write on the trivial side of seriousness, but discussion is always trivial; I shall be much more serious in trying to recall the graceful movement of the opening of her parasol, and how prettily it enframed her face. True that almost every face is pretty against the distended silk full of sunlight and shadow, but Doris's, I swear to you, was as pretty as any medieval virgin despite its modernness. Memline himself never designed a more appealing little face. Think of the enchantment of such a face after a long journey, by the sea that the Romans and the Greeks used to cross in galleys, that I used to read about when I was a boy. There it was, and on the other side the shore on which Carthage used to stand; there it was, a blue bay with long red hills reaching out, reminding me of hills I had seen somewhere, I think in a battle piece by Salvator Rosa. It seemed to me that I had seen those hills before--no, not in a picture; had I dreamed them, or was there some remembrance of a previous existence struggling in my brain? There was a memory somewhere, a broken memory, and I sought for the lost thread as well as I could, for Doris rarely ceased talking. "And there is the restaurant," she said, flinging up her parasol, "built at the end of those rocks." We were the first swallows to arrive; the flocks would not be here for about three weeks. So we had the restaurant to ourselves, the waiter and doubtless the cook; and they gave us all their attention. Would we have breakfast in the glass pavilion? How shall I otherwise describe it, for it seemed to be all glass? The scent of the sea came through the window, and the air was like a cordial--it intoxicated; and looking across the bay one seemed to be looking on the very thing that Whistler had sought for in his Nocturnes, and that Steer had nearly caught in that picture of children paddling, that dim, optimistic blue that allures and puts the world behind one, the dream of the opium-eater, the phrase of the syrens in "Tannhäuser," the phrase which begins like a barcarolle; but the accompaniment tears underneath until we thrill with expectation. As I looked across the bay, Doris seemed but a little thing, almost insignificant, and the thought came that I had not come for nothing even if I did not succeed in winning her.