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IN the summer of 18— I occupied
an old house near the seashore, in
New England. The beach, a mile
off, stretched along the indented
coast, looking as if it were an immense
mottled serpent that had
been suddenly petrified in the midst
of its writhings. On the right, a
ruined fort stared at the ocean, over the chalky
crags. At the back of the house were some two
hundred acres of woodland, moistened here and
there by ponds filled with marvellous white lilies.
The weather-beaten roofs and steeples of the town
glanced through the breezy elm trees on the left;

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while far away, over lengths of pastures and sullen
clumps of pines, Mount Agamenticus rose up like
a purple mist.

The scenery has stamped itself into my brain —
the desolate fort, staring with a blind, stunned
look through rain and sunshine; the merciless
coast; the ragged ledges, nurturing only a few
acrid berries; the forest full of gloomy sounds;
the antique spires in the distance; and, over all,
the loose gray clouds.

I had come to the New Hampshire seaboard for
the benefit of my failing health. Having spent
the greater portion of my life in an inland manufacturing
town, than which nothing could be more
common-place, the wild panorama of the coast
opened on me like an enchanted realm. A cold, gray
realm, but enchanted. I avoided society. The
sea and the shifting clouds were society enough.
The solitude that would have driven most men to
distraction, was pregnant with meaning. It left
me free, for once, to breathe, and think, and feel.

At night I wandered along the beach, watching

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the points of light that dipt and rose in the distance,
and the sails that shimmered ghost-like, for
a second, in the offing, and vanished. But more
than all I brooded over the broken image of the
moon floating on the water: that filled me like a
picture by Claude; it led me into a region of new
thought, and here I first conceived the project of
of my Moon-Apparatus, which, when completed,
will dissolve the misty theories that have deluded
man for the past five centuries. I haunted the
seashore. I lay on the rocks from sundown till
midnight, shaping the vast Idea that had grown
up within me.

My intercourse with the village, near by, was
restricted to one family — the Roylstones. I
might say restricted to one person; for Captain
Roylstone was always at sea; his wife had long
since been laid at rest in the rustic churchyard;
and only Cecil, who lived with an elderly companion,
a distant connection, I believe, represented
the family.

How we met, or how Cecil's fate and mine

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became irrevocably linked, seems so strange and
vague to me, that I shall not attempt to speak of
it. It was this woman's melancholy destiny to
love me: it was mine to return the passion a hundred
fold, and follow her to the very margin of
that mysterious world wherein she eluded me.
Wherein she still eludes me.

Alas! what right had I to love, knowing, as I
have known from boyhood, the doom that hangs
over my head, suspended by a tenure as slight as
that which held the sword of Damocles?

To-morrow it may fall!

The arrogant retina of the eye sometimes refuses
to give back the image it has received. Dissolution
alone can break the charmed picture;
and even after death, objects of terror and beauty
have been seen to fade away reluctantly from this
magical mirror. I have read, somewhere, of a
German oculist, who traced the murderer of a
lady in Göttingen, by discovering, at a postmortem
examination, the likeness of the assassin

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photographed on those curious net-like membranes,
the retinæ.

When I am dead, the face of a fair woman will
be found indelibly engraved on my eyes — not in
faint lines and curves, but sharply, as if the features
had been cut out on steel by the burin of an artist.
Yet I can but poorly describe the idyllic grace and
beauty of Cecil Roylstone.

Her hair was dark brown, and, in its most
becoming arrangement, drawn into one massive
coil over the forehead, giving her brows a Greek-like
stateliness. Her eyes were those unusual ojos
verdes, large and lucent, which the Spanish poets
mention as being the finest type. The mouth
would have been perfect, but for a slight blemish,
visible only at times, on the upper lip. Perhaps
her face was a shade too pale, for perfection, may
be too pensive, in repose — but how can I write
of Cecil as a mere portrait, when she, herself, in
her infinite sweetness, seems to pass before me!

Again she is walking, in her simple white dress,
by the seaside. The moon drifts from cloud to

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cloud, edging the gray with silver, and, far off, the
sea sparkles. A plain gold cross on her bosom
catches the moonlight. The salt breeze lifts the
braids of her hair, and blows back the folds of her
dress. I sit on the rocks watching her.

Again we are lounging along the sunny road,
on our way to town. It is an afternoon in May;
the trees are in full bloom, peach and apple.
Cecil is laughing, with an accent like music. I
see her lissome form in the checkered sunshine,
her feet, tripping on in front of me, among the
blossoms. I hardly know which are the blossoms.
Now she is walking demurely at my side, her
fingers locked in mine, and the sleepy sea-port
with its brown roofs and whitewashed chimneys,
comes out distinctly against the neutral tint of the
sky, like a picture on a wizard's glass.

Again I am sitting on the porch of the old
house, dreaming of her. I hear the sound of a
horse's hoofs beating on the dusty road, and then
Cecil — as if she had leaped out of my brain —
dashes up to the garden-gate, on the alert black

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mare which her father has sent home. In that
sea-green riding-habit and feather, she is a picture,
I take it, for Memory to press in his thumbed and
dog's-eared volume. I pat the sleek neck of the
mustang, as I speak with Cecil. I look up, and
she is gone. I see her riding madly along the
orchard walls, shaking down the blooms, in the
sunset.

Riding away from me!