by her woods and the water, a scanty population of simple and devoted people—did not Dellwig shed tears at the remembrance of his master?—every day spent here would be a day that made her better, that would bring her nearer to that heaven in which all good and simple souls dwelt while still on earth, the heaven of a serene and quiet mind. Always she had longed to be good, and to help and befriend those who had the same longing but in whom it had been partially crushed by want of opportunity and want of peace. The healthy goodness that goes hand in hand with happiness was what she meant; not that tragic and futile goodness that grows out of grief, that lifts its head miserably in stony places, that flourishes in sick rooms and among desperate sorrows, and goes to God only because all else is lost. She went round the house and crossed the road into the forest. The fresh wind blew in her face, and shook down the drops from the branches on her as she passed. The pine needles of other years made a thick carpet for her feet. The sun gleamed through the straight trunks and warmed her. The restless sighing overheard in the tree tops filled her ears with sweetest music. "I do believe the place is pleased that I have come!" she thought, with a happy laugh. She came to a clearing in the trees, opening out towards the north, and she could see the flat fields and the wide sky and the sunshine chasing the shadows across the vivid green patches that she had learned were winter rye. A hole at her feet, where a tree had been uprooted, still had snow in it; but the larks were singing above in the blue, as though from those high places they could see Spring far away in the south, coming up slowly with the first anemones in her hands, her face turned at last towards the patient north.
