ent that this
thing still held sweets for him....

With the spring the affairs on the farm took up Ishmael's interest more
and more, and he was able to find solace for the deadening knowledge of
his mistaken marriage in the things that lay so near his heart. He told
himself that it was here, in the soil, and the warm, gentle cattle and
the growing things, that his keenest as well as his truest joys were to
be found, not knowing that even while he thought it Phoebe held that
which was to thrill him as never yet anything in life had had power to
do.

She told him of it one night when he went up to bed late, thinking and
hoping she would be asleep. But she called out to him as he passed her
door. He went in and found her sitting up, looking like a child among
the big white pillows, her brown hair about her wide eyes. He was
struck by it and spoke to her gently, telling her to lie down and go to
sleep. Instead of obeying she held out her hands and drew him down
towards her.

"I want to whisper, Ishmael," she said, as she had been wont to say when
a little girl and she had had something of tremendous interest to
impart. He humoured her, and, putting his arm round her, gathered her
against him and said that he was listening. She kept a shy silence for a
second after that and then whispered. Ishmael caught the few words, and
at first they seemed to him to convey something incredible, though he
had often thought about this very thing, wondered if and when he should
hear of it. He was very gentle with her, but said little, only he stayed
by her till she had fallen asleep, and then he disengaged himself and,
going quietly out of the room, opened the front door and went out into
the garden.

It was the darkest hour of the night, only the stars shone brightly, and
not till he was upon the pale clouds of the drifted narcissi could he
tell they were there, not till their scent came up at him. The night was
very still as well as dark, but Ishmael noted neither circumstance. His
own soul held all of sound and colour and light for him, and he recked
of nothing external. This news, the simplest, oldest thing in the way of
news that there is, seemed to him never to have been told to anyone
before--never, at least, to have been so wonderful. All the beauties of
Cloom, of life, all the trouble his own short span had felt, all the
future held, seemed to fall into place and be made worth while. This was
what he had lived for without know