heart. He became conscious of a soul beautifully poised upon
itself, nothing doubting, nothing desiring, clothed in peace. It was not
possible to separate her thoughts from her appearance. The turn of her
wrist, the still sound of her voice, the light in her eyes, the lines of
her body, fell in tune with her grave and gentle words, like the
accompaniment that sustains and harmonises the voice of the singer. Her
influence was one thing, not to be divided or discussed, only to be felt
with gratitude and joy. To Will, her presence recalled something of his
childhood, and the thought of her took its place in his mind beside that
of dawn, of running water, and of the earliest violets and lilacs. It is
the property of things seen for the first time, or for the first time
after long, like the flowers in spring, to reawaken in us the sharp edge
of sense and that impression of mystic strangeness which otherwise passes
out of life with the coming of years; but the sight of a loved face is
what renews a man's character from the fountain upwards.

One day after dinner Will took a stroll among the firs; a grave beatitude
possessed him from top to toe, and he kept smiling to himself and the
landscape as he went. The river ran between the stepping-stones with a
pretty wimple; a bird sang loudly in the wood; the hill-tops looked
immeasurably high, and, as he glanced at them from time to time, seemed
to contemplate his movements with a beneficent but awful curiosity. His
way took him to the eminence which overlooked the plain; and there he sat
down upon a stone, and fell into deep and pleasant thought. The plain lay
abroad with its cities and silver river; everything was asleep, except a
great eddy of birds which kept rising and falling and going round and
round in the blue air. He repeated Marjory's name aloud, and the sound of
it gratified his ear. He shut his eyes, and her image sprang up before
him, quietly luminous and attended with good thoughts. The river might
run for ever; the birds fly higher and higher till they touched the
stars. He saw it was empty bustle after all; for here, without stirring a
foot, waiting patiently in his own narrow valley, he also had attained
the better sunlight.

The next day Will made a sort of declaration across the dinner-table,
while the parson was filling his pipe.

"Miss Marjory," he said, "I never knew any one I liked so well as you. I
am mostly a cold, unkindly sort of man; not from want of