Mr. Sparling was an
Englishman, and a man of some means who was devoting himself to
exploration in Asia Minor. The marriage was not really happy, though
they were in love with each other. In both there was a temperament
touched with melancholy, and a curious incapacity to accept the common
facts of life. Both hated routine, and were always restless for new
experience. Mrs. Sparling was brilliant in society. She was wonderfully
handsome, in a small slight way; her face was not unlike Miss Curran's
picture of Shelley--the same wildness and splendor in the eyes, the same
delicacy of feature, the same slight excess of breadth across the
cheek-bones, and curly mass of hair. She was odd, wayward,
eccentric--yet always lovable and full of charm. He was a fine creature
in many ways, but utterly unfit for practical life. His mind was always
dreaming of buried treasure--the treasure of the archaeologist: tombs,
vases, gold ornaments, papyri; he had the passion of the excavator
and explorer.
"They came back to England from America shortly after their marriage,
and their child was born. The little girl was three years old when
Sparling went off to dig in a remote part of Asia Minor.
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