“When I can eat like a pig and sleep like a dog,” he said lightly, “and feel physically fit, I shall be all right.” He smiled, and took her black-gloved hand. “And when I see the roses in your cheeks and hear you laugh as you used to laugh--that fascinating little laugh like a peal of low silver bells--that I 'll be the Princess Stellamaris's court jester again.” She smiled wanly. “You were never court jester; you were Great High Favourite.” She sighed. “How far off those childish days are!” “They 'll return as soon as you 're happy.” “Life is too full of pain for me to find happiness in superficial things,” said Stella. For all his wretchedness he could have laughed, with a man's sweet pity, at the tone of conviction in her philosophic but childish utterance. “You must look for it and find it in the deep things,” said he. She made no reply, but stood thoughtfully by his side, and drew with her fingers little lines in the summer dust on the upper surface of the bar of the gate. “There 's something silly I want to say to you, Walter,” she murmured at last, “and I don't quite know how to say it. It 's about the sea. I think you can understand. You always used to. Our long talks--you remember? Since all this has happened, the sea seems to have no meaning for me.” “It will all come back, dear,” said Herold, “with your faith in God and the essential beauty of the world.” “But what is the essential beauty of the world?” “My dear,” he laughed, “you must n't ask a poor man such conundrums and expect an instantaneous answer. I should say roughly it was strength and sacrifice and love.” He took a cigarette from his case and lit it. “You 'll find the comfort of the sea again. I think it will have quite a new meaning for you, a deeper meaning, when you sit by it with the man whom you love and who loves you, as you know he loves you, and all the past has become sacred, and there's no longer a shadow between you.” “Are you sure?” “Quite sure. You see, Stellamaris dear,” he added after a second or two, “you don't need me any longer. Your happiness, as well as John's happiness, is in your own hands. I can go away with an easy mind. And when I come back--” “Yes? And when you come back?” Pain started through his eyes. When he came back? What would be left for him? His art, his ambitions? What were they? A child's vain toys cumbering his feet. His soul was set on the slip of pale girlhood, startlingly black and white, with her mass of soft hair beneath the plain, black hat, and her great pools of eyes, no longer agates or diamonds, but aglow with remote flames, who, in poor common earthliness, stood by his side, but in maddening reality was pinnacled on inaccessible heights by the love between her and the man they both loved. He felt that the pure had an unsuspected power of torture.