If you see a little figure running towards you in a blue smock, the head fair-haired, the face blue-eyed and a little freckled with the strong sunshine, it is not a real figure; it is a child of your dreams and a ghost of the past.

You may chase him while he runs about the wharves and stumbles over the ropes, but you will never catch him.

He runs before you, zigzagging over the cobbles, up the sunny street, into the narrow house; out again, running now towards the Duomo, hiding in the porch of San Stefano, where the weavers held their meetings; back again along the wharves; surely he is hiding behind that mooring-post! But you look, and he is not there--nothing but the old harbour dust that the wind stirs into a little eddy while you look.

For he belongs not to you or me, this child; he is not yet enslaved to the great purpose, not yet caught up into the machinery of life.

His eye has not yet caught the fire of the sun setting on a western sea; he is still free and happy, and belongs only to those who love him.