he quaint, pepper-pot summer-house in the far
corner of the troco-ground, where the twenty-foot brick wall dips, in
steps of well-set masonry, to the gray three-foot balustrade. She never
remembered to have heard one sing so late in the summer. The bird was
answered moreover by another singer from the coppice, bordering the
trout-stream which feeds the Long Water, away across the valley. In
each case the song was, note for note, the same. But the chant of the
near bird was hotly urgent in its passion of "wooing and winning,"
while the song of the answerer came chastened and etherealised by
distance. A fox barked sharply on the left, out in the Warren. And the
churring of the night-jars, as they flitted hither and thither over the
beds of bracken and dog-roses, like gigantic moths, on swift, silent
wings, formed a continuous accompaniment, as of a spinning-wheel, to
the other sounds.

Never, as she watched and listened, had the genius of Brockhurst
appeared more potent or more enthralling. For a space she rested in it,
asking nothing beyond that which sight and hearing could give. It was
very good to breathe the scented air and be lulled by the inarticulate
music of nature. It was good to cease from self and from all individual
striving, to become a part merely of the universal movement of things,
a link merely in the mighty chain of universal being. But such an
impersonal attitude of mind cannot last long, least of all in the case
of a woman! Katherine's heart awoke and cried again for some human
object on which to expend itself, some kindred intelligence to meet and
reflect her own. Ah, were she but better, more holy and more wise,
these cravings would doubtless not assail her! The worship of the
Indwelling Light would suffice, and she would cease from desire of the
love of any creature. But she had not journeyed so far upon the road of
perfection yet, as she sadly told herself. Far from it. The nightingale
sang on, sang of love, not far hence, not far above, not within the
spirit only, but here, warm, immediate, and individual. And, do what
she would, the song brought to her mind such love, as she herself had
known it during the few golden months of her marriage--of meetings at
night, sweet and sacred, of partings, sweet and sacred too, at morning,
of secret delights, of moments, at once pure and voluptuous, known only
to virtuous lovers. It was not often that remembrance of all this came
back to her, save as a faint