ossy
spikes of snowdrops pushing up, struggling through the crusted earth.
The sad hero of _Maud_ walked "in a ghastly glimmer," and found "the
shining daffodil dead." I walk in the soft twilight, that is infinitely
tender, soothing, and sweet, and find the daffodil taking on his new
life; and there rises in my heart an uplifted yearning, not so much for
the good days that are dead, but that I may somehow come to possess the
peace that underlies the memory of them all--not handle it for a moment
and lay it down, but possess it or be possessed by it for ever.

Yet these busy days through which I have been passing are good for me,
I believe. I have seen and talked to a number of people; and so far
from finding that my solitary life makes me unfit for society, I think
that it gives me a good-humoured contentment in the interchange of talk
and argument, which I lacked in old days when I was fighting for my
position. The things seem to matter so little to me now. I do not care
in the least what impression I make, so long as people are kind and
friendly. Life is no longer a race, where I wish to get ahead of
others; it is a pilgrimage in which we are all alike bound. But it is
good for me to be in the middle of it all, not only because of the
contrast which it presents to the life I have chosen, but because it is
like the strong scour of a current sweeping through the mind and
leaving it clean and sweet. The danger of the quiet life is that one
gets too comfortable, too indolent. It does me good to have to mix with
people, to smile and bow, to try and say the right thing, to argue a
point courteously, to weigh an opponent's arguments, to make efforts,
to go where I do not desire to go; and I have no longer an axe of my
own to grind; I only desire that the right conclusion should be
reached.

But the things which people consider amusing and entertaining bewilder
me more and more. I went to an evening party on one of the evenings I
spent in town. There was a suite of fine rooms, hung with beautiful
pictures and full of works of art. A courteous host and hostess
received us, said a few amiable words to each, and passed us on into
the rooms: we circulated, stood, sate, looked, talked. I suppose it is
a question of temperament, but I felt that every single element of
social, intellectual, and aesthetic pleasure was absent from the scene.
One had no time to look at the beautiful things that leaned and
beckoned from the walls. The