time face to face with the eternal problem,
trying to see a way out, when before him was an impassable wall, still
hoping blindly that something would happen, some catastrophe which
should finish at once all his perplexities, and everything else
besides.

XXII

In solitary walks James had found his only consolation. He knew even in
that populous district unfrequented parts where he could wander without
fear of interruption. Among the trees and the flowers, in the broad
meadows, he forgot himself; and, his senses sharpened by long absence,
he learnt for the first time the exquisite charm of English country. He
loved the spring, with its yellow, countless buttercups, spread over the
green fields like a cloth of gold, whereon might fitly walk the angels
of Messer Perugino. The colours were so delicate that one could not
believe it possible for paints and paint-brush to reproduce them; the
atmosphere visibly surrounded things, softening their outlines.
Sometimes from a hill higher than the rest James looked down at the
plain, bathed in golden sunlight. The fields of corn, the fields of
clover, the roads and the rivulets, formed themselves in that flood of
light into an harmonious pattern, luminous and ethereal. A pleasant
reverie filled his mind, unanalysable, a waking dream of
half-voluptuous sensation.

On the other side of the common, James knew a wood of tall fir trees,
dark and ragged, their sombre green veiled in a silvery mist, as though,
like a chill vapour, the hoar-frost of a hundred winters still lingered
among their branches. At the edge of the hill, up which they climbed in
serried hundreds, stood here and there an oak tree, just bursting into
leaf, clothed with its new-born verdure, like the bride of the young
god, Spring. And the ever-lasting youth of the oak trees contrasted
wonderfully with the undying age of the firs. Then later, in the height
of the summer, James found the pine wood cool and silent, fitting his
humour. It was like the forest of life, the grey and sombre labyrinth
where wandered the poet of Hell and Death. The tall trees rose straight
and slender, like the barren masts of sailing ships; the gentle aromatic
odour, the light subdued; the purple mist, so faint as to be scarcely
discernible, a mere tinge of warmth in the day--all gave him an
exquisite sense of rest. Here he could forget his trouble, and give
himself over to the love which seemed his real life; here the
recollection