springtime? To me the flowers became symbolical of a great release, of a
wonderful awakening. My eyes had all at once been opened; till then I
had walked in darkness, yet knew it not.

Well do I remember the rambles of that springtide. I had a lodging in
one of those outer streets of Exeter which savour more of country than of
town, and every morning I set forth to make discoveries. The weather
could not have been more kindly; I felt the influences of a climate I had
never known; there was a balm in the air which soothed no less than it
exhilarated me. Now inland, now seaward, I followed the windings of the
Exe. One day I wandered in rich, warm valleys, by orchards bursting into
bloom, from farmhouse to farmhouse, each more beautiful than the other,
and from hamlet to hamlet bowered amid dark evergreens; the next, I was
on pine-clad heights, gazing over moorland brown with last year's
heather, feeling upon my face a wind from the white-flecked Channel. So
intense was my delight in the beautiful world about me that I forgot even
myself; I enjoyed without retrospect or forecast; I, the egoist in grain,
forgot to scrutinize my own emotions, or to trouble my happiness by
comparison with others' happier fortune. It was a healthful time; it
gave me a new lease of life, and taught me--in so far as I was
teachable--how to make use of it.



X.


Mentally and physically, I must be much older than my years. At three-
and-fifty a man ought not to be brooding constantly on his vanished
youth. These days of spring which I should be enjoying for their own