drove the rain against the panes, but he thought of the bee's song in the
clover, of the foxgloves in full blossom, of the wild roses, delicate,
enchanting, swaying on a long stem above the hedge. He had been in
strange places, he had known sorrow and desolation, and had grown grey
and weary in the work of letters, but he lived again in the sweetness, in
the clear bright air of early morning, when the sky was blue in June, and
the mist rolled like a white sea in the valley. He laughed when he
recollected that he had sometimes fancied himself unhappy in those days;
in those days when he could be glad because the sun shone, because the
wind blew fresh on the mountain. On those bright days he had been glad,
looking at the fleeting and passing of the clouds upon the hills, and
had gone up higher to the broad dome of the mountain, feeling that joy
went up before him.

He remembered how, a boy, he had dreamed of love of an adorable and
ineffable mystery which transcended all longing and desire. The time had
come when all the wonder of the earth seemed to prefigure this alone,
when he found the symbol of the Beloved in hill and wood and stream, and
every flower and every dark pool discoursed a pure ecstasy. It was the
longing for longing, the love of love, that had come to him when he awoke
one morning just before the dawn, and for the first time felt the sharp
thrill of passion.

He tried in vain to express to himself the exquisite joys of innocent
desire. Even now, after troubled years, in spite of some dark cloud that
overshadowed the background of his thought, the sweetness of the boy's
imagined pleasure came like a perfume into his reverie. It was no love of
a woman but the desire of womanhood, the Eros of the unknown, that made
the heart tremble. He hardly dreamed that such a love could ever be
satisfied, that the thirst of beauty could be slaked. He shrank from all
contact of actuality, not venturing so much as to imagine the inner place
and sanctuary of the mysteries. It was enough for him to adore in the
outer court, to know that within, in the sweet gloom, were the vision and
the rapture, the altar and the sacrifice.

He remembered, dimly, the passage of many heavy years since that time of
hope and passion, but, perhaps, the vague shadow would pass away, and he
could renew the boy's thoughts, the unformed fancies that were part of
the bright day, of the wild roses in the hedgerow. All other things
should be laid a