Nous étions bien, là! So sped those happy weeks--with something new and exciting every day--even on rainy days, when we wore waterproofs and big india-rubber boots and sou'westers, and Chucker-out's coat got so heavy with the soak that he could hardly drag himself along: and we settled, we three at least, that we would never go to France or Scotland--never any more--never anywhere in the world but Whitby, jolly Whitby-- Ah me! l'homme propose.... Marty always wore a red woollen fisherman's cap that hung down behind over the waving masses of her long, thick yellow hair--a blue jersey of the elaborate kind women knit on the Whitby quay--a short, striped petticoat like a Boulogne fishwife's, and light brown stockings on her long, thin legs. I have a photograph of her like that, holding a shrimping-net; with a magnifying-glass, I can see the little high-light in the middle of each jet-black eye--and every detail and charm and perfection of her childish face. Of all the art-treasures I've amassed in my long life, that is to me the most beautiful, far and away--but I can't look at it yet for more than a second at a time.... "O tempo passato, perchè non ritorni?" As Mary is so fond of singing to me sometimes, when she thinks I've got the blues. As if I haven't always got the blues! All Barty's teaching is thrown away on me, now that he's not here himself to point his moral-- "Et je m'en vais Au vent mauvais Qui m'emporte Deçà, delà, Pareil à la Feuille morte...." Heaven bless thee, Mary dear, rossignolet de mon âme! Would thou wert ever by my side! fain would I keep thee for myself in a golden cage, and feed thee on the tongues of other nightingales, so thou mightst warble every day, and all day long. By some strange congenital mystery the native tuning of thy voice is such, for me, that all the pleasure of my past years seems to go forever ringing in every single note. Thy dear mother speaks again, thy gay young father rollicks and jokes and sings, and little Marty laughs her happy laugh. _Da capo, e da capo_, Mary--only at night shouldst thou cease from thy sweet pipings, that I might smoke myself to sleep, and dream that all is once more as it used to be. * * * * * The writing, such as it is, of this life of Barty Josselin--which always means the writing of so much of my own--has been to me, up to the present moment, a great source of consolation, almost of delight, when the pen was in my hand and I dived into the past. But now the story becomes such a record of my own personal grief that I have scarcely the courage to go on; I will get through it as quickly as I can. It was at the beginning of the present decade that the bitter thing arose--medio de fonte leporum; just as all seemed so happy and secure at Marsfield.