“I never in my life saw anything more beautiful,” she wrote to him, “than Regent’s Park this morning, in a pale fog, with just a sprinkling of snow on the green of the grass, and one great yellow mansion shining through the mist—­the sunlight on it—­like some magnificent distant palace.  And I said to myself, if I were a poet or a painter I would take the common things, and show people the wonder and the beauty of them; for I believe the sense of wonder is a sort of light that shines in the soul of the artist; and the least bit of the ’denying spirit’—­the utterance of the word connu—­snuffs it out at once.  But then, dear Keith, I caught myself asking what I had to do with all these dreams, and these theories that papa would like to have talked about.  What had I to do with art?  And then I grew miserable.  Perhaps the loneliness of the park, with only those robust, hurrying strangers crossing, blowing their fingers, and pulling their cravats closer, had affected me; or perhaps it was that I suddenly found how helpless I am by myself.  I want a sustaining hand, Keith; and that is now far away from me.  I can do anything with myself of set purpose, but it doesn’t last.  If you remind me that one ought generously to overlook the faults of others—­I generously overlook the faults of others—­for five minutes.  If you remind me that to harbor jealousy and envy is mean and contemptible, I make an effort, and throw out all jealous and envious thoughts—­for five minutes.  And so you see I got discontented with myself; and I hated two men who were calling loud jokes at each other as they parted different ways; and I marched home through the fog, feeling rather inclined to quarrel with somebody.  By the way, did you ever notice that you often can detect the relationship between people by their similar mode of walking, and that more easily than by any likeness of face?  As I strolled home, I could tell which of the couples of men walking before me were brothers by the similar bending of the knee and the similar gait, even when their features were quite unlike.  There was one man whose fashion of walking was really very droll; his right knee gave a sort of preliminary shake as if it was uncertain which way the foot wanted to go.  For the life of me I could not help imitating him; and then I wondered what his face would be like if he were suddenly to turn round and catch me.”

That still dream of Regent’s Park in sunlight and snow he carried about with him as a vision—­a picture—­even amidst the blustering westerly winds, and the riven seas that sprung over the rocks and swelled and roared away into the caves of Gribun and Bourg.  There was no snow as yet up here at Dare, but wild tempests shaking the house to its foundations, and brief gleams of stormy sunlight lighting up the gray spindrift as it was whirled shoreward from the breaking seas; and then days of slow and mournful rain, with Staffa, and Lunga, and the Dutchman become mere dull patches of blurred purple—­when they were visible at all—­on the leaden-hued and coldly rushing Atlantic.