o have lived in Arden and have
gone back again into the world, are sustained in their loneliness by
the knowledge of their fellowship with a nobler community. Aliens
though they are, they have yet a country to which they are loyal, not
through interest, but through aspiration, imagination, faith, and love.
Rosalind and I found the months in Arden all too brief; our life there
was one long golden day, whose sunset cast a soft and tender light on
our whole past and made it beautiful for us. It is one of the delights
of the Forest that only the noblest aspects of life are visible there;
or, rather, that the hard and bare details of living, seen in the
atmosphere of Arden, yield some truth of character or experience which,
like the rose, makes even the rough calyx which encased it beautiful.
We had sometimes spoken together of our return to the world we had
left, but we put off as long as possible all definite preparations. I
am not sure that I should ever have come back if Rosalind had not taken
the matter into her own hands. She remembered that there was work to
be done which ought not to be longer postponed; that there were duties
to be met which ought not to be longer evaded; and when did Rosalind
fail to be or to do that which the hour and the experience commanded?
We treasured the last days as if the minutes were pure gold; we
lingered in talk with our friends as if we should never again hear such
spoken words; we loitered in the woods as if the spell of that
beautiful silence would never again touch us. And yet we knew that,
once possessed, these things were ours forever; neither care, nor
change, nor time, nor death, could take them from us, for henceforth
they were part of ourselves.

We stood again at length on the little porch, covered with dust, and
turned the key in the unused lock. I think we were both a little
reluctant to enter and begin again the old round of life and work. The
house seemed smaller and less home-like, the furniture had lost its
freshness, the books on the shelves looked dull and faded. Rosalind
ran to a window, opened it, and let in a flood of sunshine. I confess
I was beginning to feel a little heartsick, but when the light fell on
her I remembered the rainy day in Arden, when the first rays after the
storm touched her and dispelled the gloom, and I realised, with a joy
too deep for words or tears, that I had brought the best of Arden with
me. We talked little during those first