It cannot now be told to what remoteness she had come, or on what roads her undirected feet had travelled there, but certain it is that in that moment she was gone.... Why, where, or how cannot be established: whether she was swung in a blast of annihilation into the uttermost gulfs, or withdrawn for her beauty into that mysterious Nox, into some passionate communion with the eternal husbands, or into some eternal combat with their passionate other wives ... from our scrutiny at least she passed for ever.
It is true there was a beautiful woman of this name who lay for a month in a deep trance in the West of England. On her recovery she was balladed about in the newspapers and upon the halls for quite a time, and indeed her notoriety brought requests for her autograph from all parts of the world, and an offer of marriage from a Quaker potato merchant. But she tenderly refused him and became one of those faded grey old maids who wear their virginity like antiquated armour.
CRAVEN ARMS
CRAVEN ARMS
I
The teacher of the sketching class at the evening school was a man who had no great capacity for enduring affection, but his handsome appearance often inspired in women those emotions which if not enduring are deep and disturbing. His own passions may have been deep but they were undeniably fickle.
The townspeople were proud of their new school for in addition to the daily curriculum evening instruction of an advanced modern kind was given. Of course all schools since the beginning of time have been modern at some period of their existence but this one was modern, so the vicar declared, because it was so blessedly hygienic. It was built upon a high tree-arboured slope overlooking the snug small town and on its western side stared ambiguously at a free upland country that was neither small nor snug. The seventeen young women and the nine young men were definitely, indeed articulately, inartistic, they were as unæsthetic as pork pies, all except Julia Tern, a golden-haired fine-complexioned fawn of a girl whose talent was already beyond the reach of any instruction the teacher could give. He could not understand why she continued to attend his classes.
One evening she brought for his criticism a portrait sketch of himself.