Possibly he had never comprehended to the full the prophetic pain of his own emotions. As yet he had suffered no bruising by the world; nor had he learned the ignominies that assail a generous instinct and sentiment too rich for barter. Sad are the revelations that meet the idealist in the Gehenna of actuality. Like Dante, he will often discover himself an exile wandering through the world with eyes fixed on a dream face cloistered in heaven.
Coincidences astonish us; we smite our breasts and call upon that mysterious genius named of men Providence. Gabriel, turning upon his elbow and resting his head on his palm, gazed absorbedly at the sea and sand clasped by the black crescent of the rocks. As from the illumined pages of a book, a poem in the flesh gleamed out to confront his philosophy.
The bay shone solitary as some inlet echoing to a primeval sea. Yet sudden from behind a giant bowlder stranded under the umbrage of the cliff a white figure came pillaring the yellow sand. With hair blowing over bosom, stringing the breeze with golden scourges, a girl ran towards the margin of the lagoon. Her limbs gleamed snowy in the sun. The waters received her with a gush of foam, and a myriad dimples tonguing diamond-like over the pool. White arms glimmered amid a wheel of streaming hair. The man on the cliff crouched low and crimsoned like one caught in the act of theft.
Again, bewildered as a mortal who had seen Diana bathing in some forest mere, he watched the girl rise pure and radiant from the waters. He saw her wring the salt sea from her streaming hair, her large, fair face turned wistfully towards the south. He saw all this, conceived great awe and sudden sanctity of soul. And when the rocks had hidden her from sight, he arose and turned homeward towards Saltire and the woods, a strange melancholy, an indefinite sadness burdening his being.
FIVE miles from Saltire Hall stood Gabingly Castle, a modern “mediæval” structure, devoted to the fortunes of Lord Gerald Gusset, a Georgian peer. The Gussets of Gabingly were the social autocrats of the neighborhood, dispensing fame from their crested card-cases. It had been a great day for John Strong of Saltire when the Honorable Misses Gusset had partaken of tea in the “red drawing-room” of the hall. Mincing Lane and the City had faded into an irreferable past.