rough them lonely, useless, and always older, and telling
herself that she did not after all care. "What does it matter, so long
as I have a comfortable bed, and fires when I am cold, and meals when I
am hungry?" she thought. "Not to have those is the only real misery. All
the rest is purest fancy. What right have I to be happier than other
people? If they are contented by such things, I can be contented too.
And what does a useless being like me deserve, I should like to know? It
was detestably ungrateful of me to have been unhappy all this time."

She got up aimlessly, and looked out of the window into the sunny
street, where the dust was racing by on the gusty March wind, and the
women selling daffodils at the corner were more battered and blown about
and red-eyed than ever. She had often, in those moments when her whole
body tingled with a wild longing to be up and doing and justifying her
existence before it was too late, envied these poor women, because they
worked. She wondered vaguely now at her folly. "It is much better to be
comfortable," she thought, going back to the fire as aimlessly as she
had gone to the window, "and it is sheer idiocy quarrelling with a life
that other people would think quite tolerable."

Then the door opened, and the letters were brought in--the wonderful
letters that struck the whole world into radiance--lying together with
bills and ordinary notes on a salver, carried by an indifferent servant,
handed to her as though they were things of naught--the wonderful
letters that changed her life.

At first she did not understand what it was that they meant, and pored
over the cramped German writing, reading the long sentences over and
over again, till something suddenly seemed to clutch at her heart. Was
this possible? Was this actual truth? Was Uncle Joachim, who had so much
objected to her longing for independence, giving it to her with both
hands, and every blessing along with it? She read them through again,
very carefully, holding them with shaking hands. Yes, it was true. She
began to cry, sobbing over them for very love and tenderness, her whole
being melted into gratitude and humbleness, awestruck by a sense of how
little she had deserved it, dazzled by the thousand lovely colours life,
in the twinkling of an eye, had taken on.

There were two letters--one from Uncle Joachim's lawyer, and one from
Uncle Joachim himself, written soon after his return from England, with
directions