My desultory thoughts still growing calmer, I began to form plans for my way of living, as I used to do aloud, when I could talk them over with my mother and Fanny.  I did not plan anything great, however, because I was conscious of no great powers.—­I already, I think, began to divine the truth of what a wise woman afterwards said to me, “Your own nature must settle your work,” or rather of what she implied, though she did not say it:  In laying out your work, you should do your best to take the diagonal between your nature and your circumstances.—­But I resolved, such as I was, to try to make the most of myself in every way, for myself, my neighbors, and my God.

I was to stay at my guardian’s for the present.  He forbade my trying to teach again, for some months at least.  It was my duty, as well as my pleasure, to obey him.  In the mean time, I could prepare myself to teach better when I began again.  I would draw and paint at odd times.  Two hours a day I would try to divide between history and the English classic poets, of both of which I knew sadly little.  Julia often drove out with her husband; and then I could study by myself.  When she was at home, if I could not always chat with her as formerly, I could read to her in French, which she liked to hear; and that would be much more sociable and cheerful for her than my sitting mute.  I would now exert myself to walk out every day for exercise, so that there would be no reason for her giving up her place in the Doctor’s chaise to me.  I blushed to think how often I had suffered myself to be foisted into it by her already.  By my walks, I would earn leave to sit with her in-doors; and then I could save her many steps and little household cares.  Then what should I do for her husband?  Sing to him in the evening, and begin, if he liked it, to-night.  It might be a little hard the first time; but if so, there was all the more reason for having the first time over.  There was no need of my choosing sad songs, or any that Fanny was fond of.

But it was growing late.  They would be anxious.  I must get up and go home.  Go home!—­without my home-mates?—­leave them here?—­with no kiss,—­no good-night?  I stood up, and sat down again.  The blinding, choking passion, that had seemed over, swelled up into my eyes and throat once more.  O that lonely, empty life!  Must I go back to it?  How long would it last?  This was my only real home.  When might I come here to sleep?

In an instant it would have been all over again with my hardly-won calm; but in that instant a white and gray fluttering between the green graves caught my tear-blurred sight.  I thought it that of a living dove, but, going nearer, found only a piece of torn newspaper, which had been wrapped around the stems of the flowers, playing in the wind; and on it my attention was caught by these quaint and pithy lines, printed in one corner in double columns:—­

    “THE CONDITIONS.