During the first half mile or so, as must be confessed, each prick of the black horse’s ears and change in his pace sent a quake through her, as did the sight of every vehicle upon the road she passed or met.  Her nerve was nowhere, her self-confidence in tatters.  But, since this parlous state was, in the main, physical, air and movement, along with the direct call on her attention, steadied the one and knit up the ravelled edges of the other.  By the time the plateau was reached and the hill lay behind her, she could afford to walk the horse, tentatively invite her soul, and attempt to hold communion with Nature.  Sorrow—­as well as the Napoleonic Patch—­still sat very squarely beside her; but the nightmare of mortality, with consequent blankness and emptiness, was no longer omnipresent.  Interest again stirred in her, the healthy instinct of going on.

Except in the foreground, where foxy browns of withered bracken and pink-shot browns of withered heather gave richness of tone, the colouring of the great view was somewhat cold.  It dealt in thin, uncertain green, the buff of stubble, in sharp slate-like blues blended in places with indigo, the black purple of hawthorn hedges and grey-brown filigree of leafless trees.—­This did her good, she asking to be strengthened and stimulated rather than merely soothed.  To feel the harsh, untainted wind break against her, hear it shrill through the dry, shivering grasses of the roadside and sturdy spires of heath, to see it toss the dark crests and tufted branches of the outstanding firs at the edge of the plantation, brought up her morale.  Brought her resignation, moreover—­not of the self-indulgent order, of bowed head and languidly folded hands; but of the sort which acknowledges loss and sorrow as common to the sum of human experience, places it in its just relation to the rest, and, though more heavily weighted than before, takes up the onward march, sobered perhaps yet undismayed.

Sins of omission began to prick her.  The domestic establishment ran on wheels, even during the recent stress and agitation, though she had ceased to exercise control over it.  Now it must be reorganized—­and probably on a less liberal footing.—­But these were minor questions, comparatively simple to cope with.  Her life had been full, it must find fresh purpose, fresh interest and occupation, in a word, be refilled.

Literature allured her.  She dreamed of wonderful tellings, dreamed of the engrossing joys of the written word.  But in what form—­poetry, essay, history, novel?—­The extreme limitation of her own knowledge, or rather the immensity of her own ignorance, confronted her.  And that partly through her own fault, for she had been exclusive, fastidious, disposed to ignore both truths and people who offended her taste or failed to strike her fancy.  Hitherto she had been led by fancy and feeling rather than by reasoned principle.  She must at once simplify, broaden and democratize her outlook.  Must force herself to remember that respect is, in some sort, due to everything—­however unbeautiful, however even vile or repugnant—­which is a constant quantity in human affairs and human character, due to everything in the realm of Nature also, however repellent, if it is really so, actually exists.