e house, so she supposed it was very early, yet she felt as if she
had slept a long while--so completely rested, so perfectly content.
She lay with her arms clasped round her head thinking how happy she
was, her lips curved upwards in a delighted smile. In bed by herself:
adorable condition. She had not been in a bed without Mellersh once now
for five whole years; and the cool roominess of it, the freedom of
one's movements, the sense of recklessness, of audacity, in giving the
blankets a pull if one wanted to, or twitching the pillows more
comfortably! It was like the discovery of an entirely new joy.

Mrs. Wilkins longed to get up and open the shutters, but where
she was was really so very delicious. She gave a sigh of contentment,
and went on lying there looking round her, taking in everything in her
room, her own little room, her very own to arrange just as she pleased
for this one blessed month, her room bought with her own savings, the
fruit of her careful denials, whose door she could bolt if she wanted
to, and nobody had the right to come in. It was such a strange little
room, so different from any she had known, and so sweet. It was like a
cell. Except for the two beds, it suggested a happy austerity. "And
the name of the chamber," she thought, quoting and smiling round at it,
"was Peace."

Well, this was delicious, to lie there thinking how happy she
was, but outside those shutters it was more delicious still. She
jumped up, pulled on her slippers, for there was nothing on the stone
floor but one small rug, ran to the window and threw open the shutters.

"Oh!" cried Mrs. Wilkins.

All the radiance of April in Italy lay gathered together at her
feet. The sun poured in on her. The sea lay asleep in it, hardly
stirring. Across the bay the lovely mountains, exquisitely different
in colour, were asleep too in the light; and underneath her window, at
the bottom of the flower-starred grass slope from which the wall of the
castle rose up, was a great cypress, cutting through the delicate blues
and violets and rose-colours of the mountains and the sea like a great
black sword.

She stared. Such beauty; and she there to see it. Such beauty;
and she alive to feel it. Her face was bathed in light. Lovely scents
came up to the window and caressed her. A tiny breeze gently lifted
her hair. Far out in the bay a cluster of almost motionless fishing
boats hovered like a flock of white birds on the tranqui