Yet he was not happy.  He could not have assigned the cause of the fits of quiet weeping which took him sometimes; they came and went, like the fitful illumination of the clouds that travelled over the square; and perhaps, after all, if he was not happy, he was not unhappy.  Before he could be unhappy something must have been withdrawn, and nothing had yet been withdrawn from him, for nothing had been granted.  He was waiting for that granting, in that flower-laden, frightfully enticing apartment of his, with the pith-white walls tinged and subdued by the crimson blinds to a blood-like gloom.

He paid no heed to it that his stock of money was running perilously low, nor that he had ceased to work.  Ceased to work?  He had not ceased to work.  They knew very little about it who supposed that Oleron had ceased to work!  He was in truth only now beginning to work.  He was preparing such a work ... such a work ... such a Mistress was a-making in the gestation of his Art ... let him but get this period of probation and poignant waiting over and men should see....  How should men know her, this Fair One of Oleron’s, until Oleron himself knew her?  Lovely radiant creations are not thrown off like How-d’ye-do’s.  The men to whom it is committed to father them must weep wretched tears, as Oleron did, must swell with vain presumptuous hopes, as Oleron did, must pursue, as Oleron pursued, the capricious, fair, mocking, slippery, eager Spirit that, ever eluding, ever sees to it that the chase does not slacken.  Let Oleron but hunt this Huntress a little longer... he would have her sparkling and panting in his arms yet....  Oh no:  they were very far from the truth who supposed that Oleron had ceased to work!

And if all else was falling away from Oleron, gladly he was letting it go.  So do we all when our Fair Ones beckon.  Quite at the beginning we wink, and promise ourselves that we will put Her Ladyship through her paces, neglect her for a day, turn her own jealous wiles against her, flout and ignore her when she comes wheedling; perhaps there lurks within us all the time a heartless sprite who is never fooled; but in the end all falls away.  She beckons, beckons, and all goes....

And so Oleron kept his strategic post within the frame of his bedroom door, and watched, and waited, and smiled, with his finger on his lips....  It was his duteous service, his worship, his troth-plighting, all that he had ever known of Love.  And when he found himself, as he now and then did, hating the dead man Madley, and wishing that he had never lived, he felt that that, too, was an acceptable service....

But, as he thus prepared himself, as it were, for a Marriage, and moped and chafed more and more that the Bride made no sign, he made a discovery that he ought to have made weeks before.