Page:William Blake (IA williamblake00ches).pdf/20

 to sit to him, and he complained of them quite casually, as if they were rather troublesome professional models. He was angry because King Edward I. would blunder in between him and Sir William Wallace. There have been other witnesses to the supernatural even more convincing, but I think there was never any other quite so calm. His private life, as he laid its foundations in his youth, had the same indescribable element; it was a sort of abrupt innocence. Everything that he was destined to do, especially in these early years, had a placid and prosaic oddity. He went through the ordinary fights and flirtations of boyhood; and one day he happened to be talking about the unreasonable ways of some girl to another girl. The other girl (her name was Katherine Boucher) listened with apparent patience until Blake used some phrase or mentioned some incident which (she said) she really thought was pathetic or, popularly speaking, "hard on him." "Do you?" said William Blake with great suddenness. "Then I love you." After a long pause the girl said in a leisurely manner, "I love you too." In this brief and extraordinary manner was decided a marriage of