And this was to have been his Beatrice, his vision!  As Elsie she was to have gone into the furnace of his art, and she was to have come out the Woman all men desire!  Her thoughts were to have been culled from his own finest, her form from his dearest dreams, and her setting wherever he could find one fit for her worth.  He had brooded long before making the attempt; then one day he had felt her stir within him as a mother feels a quickening, and he had begun to write; and so he had added chapter to chapter....

And those fifteen sodden chapters were what he had produced!

Again he sat, softly moving his finger....

Then he bestirred himself.

She must go, all fifteen chapters of her.  That was settled.  For what was to take her place his mind was a blank; but one thing at a time; a man is not excused from taking the wrong course because the right one is not immediately revealed to him.  Better would come if it was to come; in the meantime—­

He rose, fetched the fifteen chapters, and read them over before he should drop them into the fire.

But instead of putting them into the fire he let them fall from his hand.  He became conscious of the dripping of the tap again.  It had a tinkling gamut of four or five notes, on which it rang irregular changes, and it was foolishly sweet and dulcimer-like.  In his mind Oleron could see the gathering of each drop, its little tremble on the lip of the tap, and the tiny percussion of its fall, “Plink—­plunk,” minimised almost to inaudibility.  Following the lowest note there seemed to be a brief phrase, irregularly repeated; and presently Oleron found himself waiting for the recurrence of this phrase.  It was quite pretty....

But it did not conduce to wakefulness, and Oleron dozed over his fire.

When he awoke again the fire had burned low and the flames of the candles were licking the rims of the Sheffield sticks.  Sluggishly he rose, yawned, went his nightly round of door-locks and window-fastenings, and passed into his bedroom.  Soon he slept soundly.

But a curious little sequel followed on the morrow.  Mrs. Barrett usually tapped, not at his door, but at the wooden wall beyond which lay Oleron’s bed; and then Oleron rose, put on his dressing-gown, and admitted her.  He was not conscious that as he did so that morning he hummed an air; but Mrs. Barrett lingered with her hand on the door-knob and her face a little averted and smiling.

“De-ar me!” her soft falsetto rose.  “But that will be a very o-ald tune, Mr. Oleron!  I will not have heard it this for-ty years!”

“What tune?” Oleron asked.

“The tune, indeed, that you was humming, sir.”

Oleron had his thumb in the flap of a letter.  It remained there.

“I was humming?...  Sing it, Mrs. Barrett.”

Mrs. Barrett prut-prutted.

“I have no voice for singing, Mr. Oleron; it was Ann Pugh was the singer of our family; but the tune will be very o-ald, and it is called ’The Beckoning Fair One.’”