III


That was how I first asked Margaret Lammas to be my wife, and I
will agree with anyone who says I behaved very foolishly. But I
have not repented of it, and I never shall. I have long ago
understood that I was out of my mind that evening, but I think my
temporary insanity on that occasion has had the effect of making me
a saner man ever since. Her manner turned my head, for it was so
different from what I had expected. To hear this lovely creature,
who, in my imagination, was a heroine of romance, if not of
tragedy, talking familiarly and laughing readily was more than my
equanimity could bear, and I lost my head as well as my heart. But
when I went back to England in the spring, I went to make certain
arrangements at the Castle--certain changes and improvements which
would be absolutely necessary. I had won the race for which I had
entered myself so rashly, and we were to be married in June.

Whether the change was due to the orders I had left with the
gardener and the rest of the servants, or to my own state of mind,
I cannot tell. At all events, the old place did not look the same
to me when I opened my window on the morning after my arrival.
There were the gray walls below me and the gray turrets flanking
the huge building; there were the fountains, the marble causeways,
the smooth basins, the tall box hedges, the water lilies and the
swans, just as of old. But there was something else there, too--
something in the air, in the water, and in the greenness that I did
not recognize--a light over everything by which everything was