"I shall not keep her waiting--never fear!" and Helmsley smiled as he said good-day, and jogged slowly along his favourite accustomed path to the beach. The way though rough, was not very steep, and it was becoming quite easy and familiar to him. He soon found himself on the firm brown sand sprinkled with a fringe of seaweed and shells, and further adorned in various places with great rough boulders, picturesquely set up on end, like the naturally hewn memorials of great heroes passed away. Here, the ground being level, he could walk more quickly and with greater comfort than in the one little precipitous street of Weircombe, and he paced up and down, looking at the rising and falling hollows of the sea with wistful eyes that in their growing age and dimness had an intensely pathetic expression,--the expression one sometimes sees in the eyes of a dog who knows that its master is leaving it for an indefinite period. "What a strange chaos of brain must be that of the suicide!" he thought--"Who, that can breathe the fresh air and watch the lights and shadows in the sky and on the waves, would really wish to leave the world, unless the mind had completely lost its balance! We have never seen anything more beautiful than this planet upon which we are born,--though there is a sub-consciousness in us which prophesies of yet greater beauty awaiting higher vision. The subconscious self! That is the scientist's new name for the Soul,--but the Soul is a better term. Now my subconscious self--my Soul,--is lamenting the fact that it must leave life when it has just begun to learn how to live! I should like to be here and see what Mary will do when--when I am gone! Yet how do I know but that in very truth I shall be here?--or in some way be made aware of her actions? She has a character such as I never thought to find in any mortal woman,--strong, pure, tender,--and sincere!--ah, that sincerity of hers is like the very sunlight!--so bright and warm, and clean of all ulterior motive! And measured by a worldly estimate only--what is she? The daughter of a humble florist,--herself a mere mender of lace, and laundress of fine ladies' linen! And her sweet and honest eyes have never looked upon that rag-fair of nonsense we call 'society';--she never thinks of riches;--and yet she has refined and artistic taste enough to love the lace she mends, just for pure admiration of its beauty,--not because she herself desires to wear it, but because it represents the work and lives of others, and because it is in itself a miracle of design. I wonder if she ever notices how closely I watch her! I could draw from memory the shapely outline of her hand,--a white, smooth, well-kept hand, never allowed to remain soiled by all her various forms of domestic labour,--an expressive hand, indicating health and sanity, with that deep curve at the wrist, and the delicately shaped fingers which hold the needle so lightly and guide it