or
which I had struggled, and when I waited to hear its faintest murmur
die in the distance, suddenly the tumult had risen again, and the dream
of self-communion and self-knowledge had vanished. To get out of the
uproar and confusion of things, I had often fancied, would be like
exchanging the dusty midsummer road for the shade of the woods where
the brook calms the day with its pellucid note of effortless flow, and
the hours hide themselves from the glances of the sun. In the forest
of Arden I felt sure I should find the repose, the quietude, the
freedom of thought, which would permit me to know myself. There, too,
I suspected Nature had certain surprises for me; certain secrets which
she has been holding back for the fortunate hour when her spell would
be supreme and unbroken. I even hoped that I might come unaware upon
that ancient and perennial movement of life upon which I seemed always
to happen the very second after it had been suspended; that I might
hear the note of the hermit thrush breaking out of the heart of the
forest; the soulful melody of the nightingale, pathetic with
unappeasable sorrow. In the Forest of Arden, too, there were unspoiled
men and women, as indifferent to the fashion of the world and the folly
of the hour as the stars to the impalpable mist of the clouds; men and
women who spoke the truth, and saw the fact, and lived the right; to
whom love and faith and high hopes were more real than the crowns of
which they had been despoiled and the kingdoms from which they had been
rejected. All this I had dreamed, and I know not how many other brave
and beautiful dreams, and I was dreaming them again when Rosalind laid
the apple blossoms on the study table, and answered, decisively,
"To-morrow."

"To-morrow," I repeated; "to-morrow. But how are you going to get
ready? If you sit up all night you cannot get through with the
packing. You said only yesterday that your summer dressmaking was
shamefully behind. My dear, next week is the earliest possible time
for our going."

Rosalind laughed archly, and pushed the apple blossoms over the wofully
interlined manuscript of my new article on Egypt. There was in her
very attitude a hint of unsuspected buoyancy and strength; there was in
her eyes a light which I have never seen under our uncertain skies.
The breath of the apple blossoms filled the room, and a bobolink,
poised on a branch outside the window, suddenly poured a rapturous song
into t