no doubt to lessen the risk of an accidental surprise by any roaming
villager. When Lady Constantine reappeared at the top, and saw the
parcel still untouched and Swithin asleep as before, she exhibited
some disappointment; but she did not retreat.

Looking again at him, her eyes became so sentimentally fixed on his
face that it seemed as if she could not withdraw them. There lay,
in the shape of an Antinous, no amoroso, no gallant, but a guileless
philosopher. His parted lips were lips which spoke, not of love,
but of millions of miles; those were eyes which habitually gazed,
not into the depths of other eyes, but into other worlds. Within
his temples dwelt thoughts, not of woman's looks, but of stellar
aspects and the configuration of constellations.

Thus, to his physical attractiveness was added the attractiveness of
mental inaccessibility. The ennobling influence of scientific
pursuits was demonstrated by the speculative purity which expressed
itself in his eyes whenever he looked at her in speaking, and in the
childlike faults of manner which arose from his obtuseness to their
difference of sex. He had never, since becoming a man, looked even
so low as to the level of a Lady Constantine. His heaven at present
was truly in the skies, and not in that only other place where they
say it can be found, in the eyes of some daughter of Eve. Would any
Circe or Calypso--and if so, what one?--ever check this pale-haired
scientist's nocturnal sailings into the interminable spaces
overhead, and hurl all his mighty calculations on cosmic force and
stellar fire into Limbo? Oh, the pity of it, if such should be the
case!

She became much absorbed in these very womanly reflections; and at