It was the old story of Ixion over again. Here was a man embracing a cloudy phantom of his own imagination, for, granting that this beautiful face belonged to a real woman, Maurice knew nothing about her, yet dowered her with all the exquisite perfections of feminality. He dreamed she would be loving, tender, and womanly, yet, for aught he knew, the owner of that lovely face might be a very Penthesilea for daring and masculine emulation. But no; he could not believe that she would unsex herself by taking upon her nature the rival attributes of manly strength, for the whole face breathed nothing but feminine delicacy. That broad white brow, above which the hair was smoothed in the antique fashion; those grave, earnest eyes, so full of sympathy and purity; that beautifully shaped mouth, like a scarlet flower, speaking of reticence and womanly shrinking. No; he was quite sure that she was an ideal woman, so therefore worshipped her—unseen, unheard—with all the chivalrous affection of a mediæval knight. Day and night that faultless face haunted his brain like some perfect poem, and, waking or sleeping, he seemed to hear her voice, full and rich as an organ-note, calling on him to seek her in that Island of Fantasy whereof the Greek had spoken. Was she indeed some fairy princess, detained in an enchanted castle against her will? was this mysterious Justinian, whose personality seemed so vague, indeed her jailer, guarding her as the dragon did the golden fruit of the Hesperides? and was Caliphronas a messenger sent to tell him of the reward awaiting him should he take upon him vows of releasing her from such thraldom, and accomplish his quest successfully? Curious how the classic legends and the mediæval romances mixed together in his brain, yet one and all, however diverse in thought, pointed ever to that beautiful woman dwelling in an enchanted island sea-encircled by the murmurous waves of the blue Ægean. True, he had fallen in love, and thus regained in one instant the interest in life which he had lost erstwhile; but the object of his adoration seemed so far away, her personality, about which he could only obscurely conjecture, was so lost in dream-mists, that the cure of his melancholia seemed worse than the disease itself. He again became sad and absent-minded, grieving—not, as formerly, for a vague abstraction, for something, he knew not what—but for an actual being, for an unfulfilled passion which seemed in itself as elusive a thing as had tormented him formerly. The indistinct phantom which had engendered melancholia had taken shape—the shape of a beautiful, smiling face, which mocked him with the promise of delight probably never destined to be fulfilled.