VIII

It is a year and four months since Georgiana left me, and now
everything goes on much as it did before she came. The family have
moved back to their home in Henderson, returning like a little company
of travellers who have lost their guide. Sylvia has already married;
her brother writes me that he is soon to be; the mother visits me and
my child, yearningly, but seldom, on account of her delicate health;
and thus our lives grow always more apart. None take their places, the
house having passed to people with whom, beyond all neighborly
civilities, I have naught to do. Nowadays as I stroll around my garden
with my little boy in my arms strange faces look down upon us out of
Georgiana's window.

And I have long since gone back to nature.

When the harvest has been gathered from our strong, true land, a growth
comes on which late in the year causes the earth to regain somewhat of
its old greenness. New blades spring up in the stubble of the wheat;
the beeless clover runs and blossoms; far and wide over the meadows
flows the tufted billows of the grass; and in the woods the oak-tree
drops the purple and brown of his leaf and mast upon the verdure of
June. Everywhere a second spring puts forth between summer gone and
winter nearing. It is the overflow of plenty beyond the filling of the
barns. It is a wave of life following quickly upon the one that broke
bountifully at our feet. It is nature's refusal to be once reaped and
so to end.

The math: then the aftermath.