An ecstasy of hope arose in him.  What if really there had been something wrong with his eyes!—­something that rest might set right?  What if he had wanted rest for years?—­and had gone on defying nature and common sense?

And in a moment, as he sat there, looking out into the evening, the old whirl of images invaded him—­the old tumult of ideas—­clamouring for shape and form—­flitting, phantom-like, along the woods and over the bosom of the lake.  He let himself be carried along, urging his brain, his fancy, filled with indescribable happiness.  It was years since the experience had last befallen him!  Did it mean the return of youth?—­conception?—­creative power?  What matter!—­years, or hardship?—­if the mind could still imagine, the hand still shape?

He thought of his own series of the ’Months’—­which he had planned among these hills, and had carried out perfunctorily and vulgarly, in the city, far from the freshness and infinity of Nature.  All the faults of his designs appeared to him, and the poverty of their execution.  But he was only exultant, not depressed.  Now that he could judge himself, now that his brain had begun to react once more, with this vigour, this wealth of idea—­surely all would be well.

Then for the first time he thought of the money which Phoebe had saved.  Abroad!  Italy?—­or France?  To go as a wanderer and a student, on pilgrimage to the sources of beauty and power.  What was old, or played out?  Not Beauty!—­not the mind within him—­not his craftsman’s sense.  He threw himself on the grass, face downwards, praying as he had been wont to do in his youth, but in a far more mystical, more inward way; not to a far-off God, invited to come down and change or tamper with external circumstance; but to something within himself, identified with himself, the power of beauty in him, the resurgent forces of hope—­and love.

At last, after a long time, as the summer twilight was waning, there struck through his dream the thought of Phoebe—­alone in the cottage—­waiting for him.  He sprang up, and began to hurry down the hill.

Phoebe was quite alone.  The little servant who only came for the day had gone back to the farm where she slept, and Carrie and Miss Anna had long since departed on their visit.

Carrie had told her mother that ‘father’ had gone for a walk.  And strangely enough, though he was away two hours, and she knew him still far from his usual strength, Phoebe was not anxious.  But she was mortally tired—­as though of a sudden a long tension had been loosened, a long effort relaxed.

So she had gone upstairs to bed.  But she had not begun to undress, and she sat in a low chair near the window, with the casements wide open, and the twin-peaks visible through them under a starry sky.  Her head had fallen back against the chair; her hands were folded on her lap.

Then she heard Fenwick come in and his step coming up the stairs.