This second winter seemed more lonely to me.  The star that had shone upon me seemed farther away than ever.  I could see it still.  It was hopelessly distant.  My Juno!  For a little while I could imagine she was thinking of me, that my little name might be associated in her memory with what we had talked of, what we had seen together, with some of the high things which I knew must never leave her thoughts.  But this glimmering memory of me I knew must have faded away as her life went on, varied as it was with change of faces, sounds of music, and whirl of excitement.  Then, too, I never heard her name mentioned.  She was out of my circle, as far away from my sphere as the heroines of those old romances that I had read so long ago; but more life-like, more warm, more sunny was her influence still.  It uplifted my work, and crowned my leisure with joy.  I blessed the happy sunshine of that 27th of May, which in a strange way had been the clue that led to my knowledge of her.

The longest winter-months melt away at last into spring, and so did these.  May came with her promises and blights of promise.  Recalling, this time, how sunshine would come with the latter end of May through the dark walls, I begged of Mr. Clarkson that a favorite pattern of mine might be put upon the looms.  Its design was imagined by one of my companions in my later walks.  He was an artist of the mills, and had been trying to bring within the rigid lines that were required some of the grace and freedom of Nature.  He had scattered here some water-lilies among broad green leaves.  My admiration for Nature, alas! had grown only after severe cultivation among the strange forms which we carpet-makers indulge in with a sort of mimicry of Nature.  So I cannot be a fair judge of this, even as a work of art.  I see sometimes tapestries in a meadow studded with buttercups, and I fancy patterns for carpets when I see a leaf casting its shadow upon a stone.  So I may be forgiven for saying that these water-lilies were dear to me as seeming like Nature, as they were lying upon their green leaves.

Mr. Clarkson granted my request, and for a few days, this pattern was woven by the machine.  These trial-days I was excited from my usual calmness.  The first day the sunshine did not reach the narrow window.  The second day we had heavy storm and rain.  But the third day, not far from the expected hour, the sunshine burst through the little space.  It fell upon my golden threads; it seemed directly to embrace them joyously, to encircle them closely.  The sunlight seemed to incorporate itself with the woolly fibre, to conceal itself among the work where the shuttle chose to hide it.  I fancied a sort of laughing joy, a clatter and dash in the machinery itself, as though there were a happy time, where was usually only a monotonous whirl.  I could scarcely contain myself till noon.