The secret voice of which formerly she had been aware in her moments of solitude was now heard no more. The sorrowful ghost had been laid. It seemed to her, as she lay contemplating the window and the ceiling of the long, low bedroom during the peaceful half-hour between waking and rising, that she had fallen into harmony with the life of the earth in its springtime mood, calmly and contentedly accepting the visiting of suns and showers and the gradual process of budding and unfolding. Life was changed for her: all her being had been warmed into something fuller and richer. She thought with pleasure of the day’s work before her, of the comings and goings about the house and farm, the chance meetings, as each of them went about his particular business, with Ben, Mrs. Jobson, George the hind, and Peter the boy; but especially with David, for it was David, she felt, who had brought this rarer harmony among them, and had brought to her the one indefinable element that life had hitherto lacked.
