holidays as opportunities never realized, as intervals that should have
been filled with unmitigated joys, and yet were invariably wasted,
usually in walks with Eda Rawle. To-day, feeling an irresistible longing
for freedom, for beauty, for adventure, for quest and discovery of she
knew not what, she avoided Eda, and after gazing awhile at the sunlight
dancing in the white mist below the falls, she walked on, southward,
until she had left behind her the last straggling houses of the city and
found herself on a wide, tarvia road that led, ultimately, to Boston. So
read the sign.

Great maples, heavy with leaves, stood out against the soft blue of the
sky, and the sunlight poured over everything, bathing the stone walls,
the thatches of the farmhouses, extracting from the copses of stunted
pine a pungent, reviving perfume. Sometimes she stopped to rest on the
pine needles, and walked on again, aimlessly, following the road because
it was the easiest way. There were spring flowers in the farmhouse yards,
masses of lilacs whose purple she drank in eagerly; the air, which had
just a tang of New England sharpness, was filled with tender sounds, the
clucking of hens, snatches of the songs of birds, the rustling of maple
leaves in the fitful breeze. A chipmunk ran down an elm and stood staring
at her with beady, inquisitive eyes, motionless save for his quivering
tail, and she put forth her hand, shyly, beseechingly, as though he held
the secret of life she craved. But he darted away.

She looked around her unceasingly, at the sky, at the trees, at the
flowers and ferns and fields, at the vireos and thrushes, the robins and
tanagers gashing in and out amidst the foliage, and she was filled with a
strange yearning to expand and expand until she should become a part of
all nature, be absorbed into it, cease to be herself. Never before had
she known just that feeling, that degree of ecstasy mingled with divine