is freedom from the tyranny of
plans and dates, and thus much Rosalind had conceded to me.

There had been an irresistible charm in the very secrecy which
protected our adventure from the curious and unsympathetic comment of
the world. We found endless pleasure in imagining what this and that
good neighbour of ours would say about the folly of leaving a
comfortable house, good beds, and a well-stocked larder for the hard
fare and uncertain shelter of a strange forest. "For my part," we
gleefully heard Mrs. Grundy declare,--"for my part, I cannot understand
why two people old enough to know better should make tramps of
themselves and go rambling about a piece of woods that nobody ever
heard of in the heat of the midsummer." Poor Mrs. Grundy! We could
well afford to laugh merrily at her scornful expostulations; for while
she was repeating platitudes to overdressed and uninteresting people at
Oldport, we should be making sunny play of life with men and women
whose thoughts were free as the wind, and whose hearts were fresh as
the dew and the stars. And often when our talk had died into silence,
and the wind without whistled to the fire within, we had fallen to
dreaming of those shadowy aisles arched by the mighty trees, and of the
splendid pageant that should make life seem as great and rich as Nature
herself. I confess that all my dreams came to one ending; that I
should suddenly awake in some golden hour and really know Rosalind. Of
course I had been coming through all these years to know something
about Rosalind; but in this busy world, with work to be done, and bills
to be paid, and people to be seen, and journeys to be made, and
friction and worry and fatigue to be borne, how can we really come to
know one another? We may meet the vicissitudes and changes side by
side; we may work together in the long days of toil; our hearts may
repose on a common trust, our thoughts travel a common road; but how
rarely do we come to the hour when the pressure of toil is removed, the
clouds of anxiety melt into blue sky, and in the whole world nothing
remains but the sun on the flower, and the song in the trees, and the
unclouded light of love in the eyes?

I dreamed, too, that in finding Rosalind I should also find myself.
There were times when I had seemed on the very point of making this
discovery, but something had always turned me aside when the quest was
most eager and promising; the world pressed into the seclusion f