"Ah yes, 6.40; I haven't much time, but I have a fly at the door. Thank you very much." It was not apparent whether the thanks applied to her having reminded him of his train, or to the more sentimental remark. "Good-bye, Mrs. Osmond; good-bye." He shook hands with her, without meeting her eye, and then he turned to Mrs. Touchett, who had wandered back to them. With her his parting was equally brief; and in a moment the two ladies saw him move with long steps across the lawn. "Are you very sure he is to be married?" Isabel asked of her aunt.

"I can't be surer than he; but he seems sure. I congratulated him, and he accepted it."

"Ah," said Isabel, "I give it up!" -while her aunt returned to the house and to those avocations which the visitor had interrupted.

She gave it up, but she still thought of it-thought of it while she strolled again under the great oaks whose shadows were long upon the acres of turf. At the end of a few minutes she found herself near a rustic bench, which, a moment after she had looked at it, struck her as an object recognised. It was not simply that she had seen it before, nor even that she had sat upon it; it was that in this spot something important had happened to her-that the place had an air of association. Then she remembered that she had been sitting there six years before, when a servant brought her from the house the letter in which Caspar Goodwood informed her that he had followed her to Europe; and that when she had read that letter she looked up to hear Lord Warburton announcing that he should like to marry her. It was indeed an historical, an interesting, bench; she stood and looked at it as if it might have something to say to her. She would not sit down on it now-she felt rather afraid of it. She only stood before it, and while she stood, the past came back to her in one of those rushing waves of emotion by which people of sensibility are visited at odd hours.

The effect of this agitation was а sudden sense of being very tired, under the influence of which she overcame her scruples and sank into the rustic seat. I have said that she was restless and unable to occupy herself; and whether or no, if you had seen her there, you would have admitted the justice of the former epithet, you would at least have allowed that at this moment she was the image of a victim of idleness. Her attitude had a singular absence of purpose; her hands, hanging at her sides, lost themselves in the folds of her black dress; her eyes gazed vaguely before her. There was nothing to recall her to the house, the two ladies, in their seclusion, dined early, and had tea at an indefinite hour. How long she had sat in this position she could not have told you; but the twilight had grown thick when she became aware that she was not alone. She quickly straightened herself, glancing about, and then saw what had become of her solitude. She was sharing it with Caspar Goodwood, who stood looking at her, a few feet off, and whose footfall, on the unresonant turf, as he came near, she had not heard. It occurred to her, in the midst of this, that it was just so Lord Warburton had surprised her of old.

She instantly rose, and as soon as Goodwood saw that he was seen he started forward. She had had time only to rise, when with a motion that looked like violence, but felt like-she knew not what-he grasped her by the wrist and made her sink again into the seat. She closed her eyes; he had not hurt her, it was only a touch that she had obeyed. But there was something in his face that she wished not to see. That was the way he had looked at her the other day in the churchyard; only to-day it was worse. He said nothing at first; she only felt him close to her. It almost seemed to her that no one had ever been so close to her as that. this, however, took but a moment, at the end of which she had disengaged

All

her wrist, turning her eyes upon her visitant.

"You have frightened me," she said.

"I didn't mean to," he answered; "but if I did a little, no matter. I came from London a while ago by the train, but I couldn't come here directly. There was а man at the station who got ahead of me. He took a fly that was there, and I heard him give the order to drive here. I don't know who he was, but I didn't want to come with him; I wanted to see you alone. So I have been waiting and walking about. I have walked all over, and I was just coming to the house when I saw you here. There was a keeper, or some one, who met me; but that was all right, because I had made his acquaintance when I came here with your cousin. Is that gentleman gone? are you really alone? I want to speak to you." Goodwood spoke very fast; he was as excited as when they parted in Rome. Isabel had hoped that condition would subside; and she shrank into herself as she perceived that, on the contrary, he had only let out sail. She had a new sensation; he had never produced it before; it was a feeling of danger. There was indeed something awful in his persistency. Isabel gazed straight before her; he, with a hand on each knee, leaned forward, looking deeply into her face. The twilight seemed to darken around them. "I want to speak to you," he repeated; "I have something particular to say. I don't want to trouble you-as I did the other day, in Rome. That was no use; it only distressed you. I couldn't help it; I knew I was wrong.

But

I am not wrong now; please don't think I am," he went on, with his hard, deep voice melting a moment into entreaty. "I came here to-day for a purpose; it's very different. It was no use for me to speak to you then; but now I can help you."

She could not have told you whether it was because she was afraid, or because such a voice in the darkness seemed of necessity a boon; but she No. 265.-VOL. XLV.

listened to him as she had never listened before; his words dropped deep into her soul. They produced a sort of stillness in all her being; and it was with an effort, in a moment, that she answered him.

"How can you help me?" she asked, in a low tone; as if she were taking what he had said seriously enough to make the inquiry in confidence.

"By inducing you to trust me. Now I know-to-day I know.-Do you remember what I asked you in Rome? Then I was quite in the dark. But to-day I know on good authority; everything is clear to me to-day. It was a good thing, when you made me come away with your cousin. He was a good fellow-he

was a noble fellow-he told me how the case stands. He explained everything; he guessed what I thought of you. He was a member of your family, and he left you-so long as you should be in England-to my care," said Goodwood, as if he were making a great point. "Do you know what he said to me the last time I saw him as he lay there where he died? He said-Do everything you can for her; do everything she will let you.'

Isabel suddenly got up. "You had no business to talk about me!"

"Why not-why not, when we talked in that way?" he demanded, following her fast. "And he was dying when a man's dying it's dif ferent." She checked the movement she had made to leave him; she was listening more than ever; it was true that he was not the same as that last time. That had been aimless, fruitless passion; but at present he had an idea. Isabel scented his idea in all her being. "But it doesn't matter! he exclaimed, pressing her close, though now without touching a hem of her garment. "If Touchett had never opened his mouth, I should have known all the same. I had only to look at you at your cousin's funeral to see what's the matter with you. You can't deceive me any more; for God's

с

sake be honest with a man who is so

honest with you. You are the most unhappy of women, and your husband's a devil!".

She turned on him as if he had struck her. "Are you mad?" she cried..

"I have never been so sane; I see the whole thing. Don't think it's necessary to defend him. But I won't say another word against him; I will speak only of you," Goodwood added, quickly. "How can you pretend you are not heart-broken? You don't know what to do-you don't know where to turn. It's too late to play a part; didn't you leave all that behind you in Rome ? Touchett knew all about it and I knew it too-what it would cost you to come here. It will cost you your life! When I know that, how can I keep myself from wishing to save you? What would you think of me if I should stand still and see you go back to your reward? 'It's awful, what she'll have to pay for it!'-that's what Touchett said to me. I may tell you that, mayn't I? He was such a near relation!" cried Goodwood, making his point again. "I would sooner have been shot than let another man say those things to me; but he was different; he seemed to me to have the right. It was after he got home -when he saw he was dying, and when I saw it too. I understand all about it: you are afraid to go back. You are perfectly alone; you don't know where to turn. Now it is that I want you to think of me."

"To think of you?" Isabel said, standing before him in the dusk. The idea of which she had caught a glimpse a few moments before now loomed large. She threw back her head a little; she stared at it as if it had been a comet in the sky.

"You don't know where to turn; turn to me! I want to persuade you to trust me," Goodwood repeated. And then he paused a moment, with his shining eyes. Why should you go back-why should you go through that ghastly form?"

66

"To get away from you!" she answered. But this expressed only a little of what she felt. The rest was that she had never been loved before. It wrapped her about; it lifted her off her feet.

At first, in rejoinder to what she had said, it seemed to her that he would break out into greater violence. But after an instant he was perfectly quiet; he wished to prove that he was sane, that he had reasoned it all out. "I wish to prevent that, and I think I may, if you will only listen to me. It's too monstrous to think of sinking back into that misery. It's you that are out of your mind. Trust me as if I had the care of you. Why shouldn't we be happy--when it's here before us, when it's so easy? I am yours for ever for ever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock. What have you to care about? You have no children; that perhaps would be an obstacle. As it is, you have nothing to consider. You must save what you can of your life; you mustn't lose it all simply because you have lost a part. It would be an insult to you to assume that you care for the look of the thing-for what people will say for the bottomless idiocy of the world! We have nothing to do with all that; we are quite out of it; we look at things as they are. You took the great step in coming away; the next is nothing; it's the natural one. I swear, as I stand here that a woman deliberately made to suffer is justified in anything in lifein going down into the streets, if that will help her! I know how you suffer, and that's why I am here. We can do absolutely as we please; to whom under the sun do we owe anything? What is it that holds us-what is it that has the smallest right to interfere in such a question as this? Such a question is between ourselves-and to say that is to settle it! Were we born to rot in our misery-were we born to be afraid? I never knew you afraid! If you only trust me, how little you will be disappointed! The world is all before us-and the world

is very about that."

Isabel gave a long murmur, like a creature in pain; it was as if he were pressing something that hurt her. "The world is very small," she said, at random; she had an immense desire to appear to resist.

She said it at

random, to hear herself say something; but it was not what she meant. The world, in truth, had never seemed so large; it seemed to open out, all round her, to take the form of a mighty sea, where she floated in fathomless waters. She had wanted help, and here was help; it had come in a rushing torrent. I know not whether she believed everything that he said; but she believed that to let him take her in his arms would be the next best thing to dying. This belief, for a moment, was a kind of rapture, in which she felt herself sinking and sinking. In the movement she seemed to beat with her feet, in order to catch herself, to feel something to rest on.

"Ah, be mine as I am yours!" she heard her companion cry. He had suddenly given up argument, and his voice seemed to come through a confusion of sound.

This however, of course, was but a subjective fact, as the metaphysicians say; the confusion, the noise of waters, and all the rest of it, were in her own head. In an instant she became aware of this. "Do me the greatest kindness of all," she said. "I beseech you to go away !”

"Ah, don't say that. Don't kill me!" he cried.

She clasped her hands; her eyes her eyes were streaming with tears.

"As you love me, as you pity me, leave me alone!"

He glared at her a moment through the dusk, and the next instant she felt his arms about her, and his lips on her own lips. His kiss was like a flash of lightning; when it was dark again she was free. She never looked about her; she only darted away from the spot. There were lights in the windows of

lawn. In an extraordinarily short time -for the distance was considerableshe had moved through the darkness (for she saw nothing) and reached the door. Here only she paused. She looked all about her; she listened a little; then she put her hand on the latch. She had not known where to turn; but she knew now. There was a very straight path.

Two days afterwards, Caspar Goodwood knocked at the door of the house in Wimpole Street in which Henrietta Stackpole occupied furnished lodgings. He had hardly removed his hand from the knocker when the door was opened, and Miss Stackpole herself stood before him. She had on her bonnet and jacket; she was on the point of going out.

"Oh, good morning," he said. "I was in hope I should find Mrs. Osmond."

Henrietta kept him waiting a moment for her reply; but there was a good deal of expression about Miss Stackpole even when she was silent.

"Pray what led you to suppose she was here?"

"I went down to Gardencourt this morning, and the servant told me she had come to London. He believed she was to come to you."

Again Miss Stackpole held him— with an intention of perfect kindness -in suspense.

"She came here yesterday, and spent the night. But this morning she

started for Rome."

Caspar Goodwood was not looking at her; his eyes were fastened on the doorstep.

"Oh, she started· -"he stammered. And without finishing his phrase, or looking up, he turned away.

Henrietta had come out, closing the door behind her, and now she put out her hand and grasped his arm.

"Look here, Mr. Goodwood," she said; "just you wait!"

On which he looked up at her.

HENRY JAMES, JR.

SOUL, spirit, vital principle, or by whatever other name it may be called, there is in whatever lives a something, real though unexplained, which determines its life, growth, and duration; a something, itself a part, yet having action on the whole, and without which the rest is nothing but decay more or less speedy, and dissolution. Nations too, like other organisations, have each its own vital principle, in virtue of which they grow and live, and on which they proportion and shape themselves; while its loss implies the similar loss at no distant period of the national type and vigour, followed by the resolution of the whole into an incoherent mass of selfish individualities, and ultimate obliteration. This is nothing else than the idea, the system, the master-thought, connatural or adopted, with which the nation has identified itself, and in which it has found the principle of its life and growth, the secret of its strength, the augury of its future. This too it is that men love to embody in some national watchword, some name, usage, or symbol, and often enshrine in some special site, some peculiar sanctuary chosen out and consecrated to its honour. Very generally, though not always, the spot thus selected is linked one way or other with the individual memory of some hero or demi-god, some protective power, identified with personal act or life. Rome indeed, universal in the forecast as in the realisation of her greatness, limited the mystery of her tutelary Capitol by no recognised name, or veiled it by the vague but high-sounding title of the Father of gods and men; but the Acropolis of Athens, the city of selfgovernment and intellect, was consecrated to Minerva; the Ka'abeh of the Arabs, when the Arabs first knew

themselves a nation, to the memory of Abraham; Incarnate Wisdom lent its name to the Byzantine Palladium in the capital where the Son of God first received, and may yet again receive, imperial worship; France, while yet the France that claimed to herself the vanguard of Christian Europe, revered the sainted royalty of St. Denis; Spanish gloom imagined a patron and type in the ascetic St. James and the cave of Compostella; Bulgarian hardihood still affects the mountain hermitage of Rilo; sociable Russia bows before the hundred shrines

of holy Moscow. The list might easily be drawn out to ten times the length; for the name is not more intimately connected with the individual, nor the device with the flag, than are the sanctuary and the patron, most often both, but at all events one or other of them, with the nationality. For they are the abridgment of its meaning, the symbol and token of its life; and the nation that has not these, however abundant in mechanical inventions, and the grosser forms of ungraceful wealth, is a mere association of ignoble aims and deeds, a banded rabble of vulgar enterprise and selfish adventures, nothing more.

It is not indeed generally till the growing nation has definitely emerged from that early and half-formed condition in which, like the human infant, it "has never thought that 'this is I,'" has arrived at self-consciousness, and the knowledge of its own strength and purport, that the selection of patron or sanctuary is made; and hence we find their appearance coincident most often with the opening cycle of the national greatness itself. Some successful leader, some oratorsaint, some chieftainship of hand or mind, some victory won, some glorious