to him and beguiles him, but it is a beauty akin to that of Michel
Angelo's 'Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed'--which yet, for all its
purity, is not, as Fenwick's case shows, without its tragic effects in
the world.

On looking through my notes, I find that this was not my first idea.
The distracting intervening woman was to have been of a commoner type,
intellectual indeed rather than sensuous, but yet of the predatory
type and class, which delights in the capture of man. When I began to
write the first scene in which Eugénie was to appear, she was still
nebulous and uncertain. Then she did appear--suddenly!--as though the
mists parted. It was not the woman I had been expecting and preparing
for. But I saw her quite distinctly; she imposed herself; and
thenceforward I had nothing to do but to draw her.

The drawing of Eugénie made perhaps my chief pleasure in the story,
combined with that of the two landscapes--the two sharply contrasted
landscapes--Westmoreland and Versailles, which form its main
background. I find in a note-book that it was begun 'early in May,
1905, at Robin Ghyll. Finished (at Stocks) on Tuesday night or rather
Wednesday morning, 1 A.M., Dec. 6, 1905. Deo Gratias!' And an earlier
note, written in Westmoreland itself, records some of the impressions
amid which the first chapters were written. I give it just as I find
it:

'The exquisiteness of the spring. The strong-limbed sycamores with
their broad expanding leaves. The leaping streams, and the small
waterfalls, white and foaming--the cherry blossom, the white
farms, the dark yews which are the northern cypresses--and the tall
upstanding firs and hollies, vigorously black against the delicate