“First a peace out of pain—­then a light—­then thy breast!...”

She trembled through and through.  Restraining herself, she rose, and went to her locked desk, taking from it the closely written journal of her father’s life, which had now been for months the companion of her thoughts, and of the many lonely moments in her days and nights.  She opened on a passage tragically familiar to her: 

“It is an April day.  Everything is very still and balmy. clouds are low, yet suffused with sun.  They seem to be tangled among the olives, and all the spring green and flowering fruit trees are like embroidery on a dim yet shining background of haze, silvery and glistening in the sun, blue and purple in the shadows.  The beach-trees in the olive garden throw up their pink spray among the shimmering gray leaf and beside the gray stone walls.  Warm breaths steal to me over the grass and through the trees; the last brought with it a strong scent of narcissus.  A goat tethered to a young tree in the orchard has reared its front feet against the stem, and is nibbling at the branches.  His white back shines amid the light spring shade.

     “Far down through the trees I can see the sparkle of the
     waves—­beyond, the broad plain of blue; and on the headland,
     a mile away, white foam is dashing.

“It is the typical landscape of the South, and of spring, the landscape, with only differences in detail, of Theocritus or Vergil, or the Greek anthologists, those most delicate singers of nature and the South.  From the beginning it has filled man with the same joy, the same yearning, the same despair.

     “In youth and happiness we are the spring—­the young
     green—­the blossom—­the plashing waves.  Their life is ours
     and one with ours.

“But in age and grief?  There is no resentment, I think; no anger, as though a mourner resented the gayety around him; but, rather, a deep and melancholy wonder at the chasm that has now revealed itself between our life and nature.  What does the breach mean?—­the incurable dissonance and alienation?  Are we greater than nature, or less?  Is the opposition final, the prophecy of man’s ultimate and hopeless defeat at the hands of nature?—­or is it, in the Hegelian sense, the mere development of a necessary conflict, leading to a profounder and intenser unity?  The old, old questions—­stock possessions of the race, yet burned anew by life into the blood and brain of the individual.

“I see Diana in the garden with her nurse.  She has been running to and fro, playing with the dog, feeding the goat.  Now I see her sitting still, her chin on her hands, looking out to sea.  She seems to droop; but I am sure she is not tired.  It is an attitude not very natural to a child, especially to a child so full of physical health and vigor; yet she often falls into it.

     “When I see it I am filled with dread.  She knows nothing, yet
     the cloud seems to be upon her.  Does she already ask herself
     questions—­about her father—­about this solitary life?