She had regained a look of
health and lightness more marked than he had ever before seen in
her. Her illness had proved a rest, in spite of all the trouble she
had passed through. Some new beauty, the beauty of experience, had
passed into her face without making havoc of the youthful contours
and the girlish freshness, and the beautiful line of her cheek
outlined upon the dark fur, with the wide-open eye above it, came
upon Howard with an almost tormenting sense of loveliness, like a
chord of far-off music. He flung down his pen, and took his wife in
his arms for an instant. "Yes," he said in answer to her look,
"it's all right, darling--I can manage anything with you near me,
looking like that--that's all I want!"
They went out into the garden with its frost-crisped grass and
leafless shrubberies, with the high-standing down behind. "How it
blows!" said Howard:
"''Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood:
'Tis the old wind, in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood!'
How beautiful that is--'the old wind, in the old anger!'--but it
isn't true, for all that. If one thing changes, everything changes;
and the wind has got to march on, like you and me: there's nothing
pathetic about it. The weak thing is to want to stay as we are!"
"Oh yes," said Maud; "one wastes pity. I was inclined myself to be
pathetic about it all yesterday, when I went up home and looked
into my little old room.
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