The Well-Beloved | Page 3

'But that was years ago, my dear!'
'O yes, and for the moment I forgot! He seemed just the same to me as
he used to be.'
'Well, it can't be helped now. You must be careful in the future. He's
got lots of young women, I'll warrant, and has few thoughts left for you.
He's what they call a sculptor, and he means to be a great genius in that
line some day, they do say.'
'Well, I've done it; and it can't be mended!' moaned the girl.
Meanwhile Jocelyn Pierston, the sculptor of budding fame, had gone
onward to the house of his father, an inartistic man of trade and
commerce merely, from whom, nevertheless, Jocelyn condescended to
accept a yearly allowance pending the famous days to come. But the
elder, having received no warning of his son's intended visit, was not at
home to receive him. Jocelyn looked round the familiar premises,
glanced across the Common at the great yards within which eternal
saws were going to and fro upon eternal blocks of stone--the very same
saws and the very same blocks that he had seen there when last in the
island, so it seemed to him--and then passed through the dwelling into
the back garden.
Like all the gardens in the isle it was surrounded by a wall of dry-
jointed spawls, and at its further extremity it ran out into a corner,
which adjoined the garden of the Caros. He had no sooner reached this

spot than he became aware of a murmuring and sobbing on the other
side of the wall. The voice he recognized in a moment as Avice's, and
she seemed to be confiding her trouble to some young friend of her
own sex.
'Oh, what shall I DO! what SHALL I do!' she was saying bitterly. 'So
bold as it was--so shameless! How could I think of such a thing! He
will never forgive me--never, never like me again! He'll think me a
forward hussy, and yet--and yet I quite forgot how much I had grown.
But that he'll never believe!' The accents were those of one who had for
the first time become conscious of her womanhood, as an unwonted
possession which shamed and frightened her.
'Did he seem angry at it?' inquired the friend.
'O no--not angry! Worse. Cold and haughty. O, he's such a fashionable
person now--not at all an island man. But there's no use in talking of it.
I wish I was dead!'
Pierston retreated as quickly as he could. He grieved at the incident
which had brought such pain to this innocent soul; and yet it was
beginning to be a source of vague pleasure to him. He returned to the
house, and when his father had come back and welcomed him, and they
had shared a meal together, Jocelyn again went out, full of an earnest
desire to soothe his young neighbour's sorrow in a way she little
expected; though, to tell the truth, his affection for her was rather that
of a friend than of a lover, and he felt by no means sure that the
migratory, elusive idealization he called his Love who, ever since his
boyhood, had flitted from human shell to human shell an indefinite
number of times, was going to take up her abode in the body of Avice
Caro.

1. II. THE INCARNATION IS ASSUMED TO BE TRUE
It was difficult to meet her again, even though on this lump of rock the
difficulty lay as a rule rather in avoidance than in meeting. But Avice

had been transformed into a very different kind of young woman by the
self-consciousness engendered of her impulsive greeting, and,
notwithstanding their near neighbourhood, he could not encounter her,
try as he would. No sooner did he appear an inch beyond his father's
door than she was to earth like a fox; she bolted upstairs to her room.
Anxious to soothe her after his unintentional slight he could not stand
these evasions long. The manners of the isle were primitive and
straightforward, even among the well-to-do, and noting her
disappearance one day he followed her into the house and onward to
the foot of the stairs.
'Avice!' he called.
'Yes, Mr. Pierston.'
'Why do you run upstairs like that?'
'Oh--only because I wanted to come up for something.'
'Well, if you've got it, can't you come down again?'
'No, I can't very well.'
'Come, DEAR Avice. That's what you are, you know.'
There was no response.
'Well, if you won't, you won't!' he continued. 'I don't want to bother
you.' And Pierston went away.
He was stopping to look at the old-fashioned flowers under the garden
walls when he heard a voice behind him.
'Mr. Pierston--I wasn't angry with you. When you were