satisfaction, its opportunities, exultant in this glorious gift of life.  Had I the power of music I would make a world-wide motif swell and amplify, gather to itself this theme and that, and rise at last to sheer ecstasy of triumph and rejoicing.  It should be all sound, all pride, all the hope of outsetting in the morning brightness, all the glee of unexpected happenings, all the gladness of painful effort suddenly come to its reward; it should be like blossoms new opened and the happy play of children, like tearful, happy mothers holding their first-born, like cities building to the sound of music, and great ships, all hung with flags and wine bespattered, gliding down through cheering multitudes to their first meeting with the sea.  Through it all should march Hope, confident Hope, radiant and invincible, until at last it would be the triumph march of Hope the conqueror, coming with trumpetings and banners through the wide-flung gates of the world.

And then out of that luminous haze of gladness comes Nettie, transfigured.

So she came again to me—­amazing, a thing incredibly forgotten.

She comes back, and Verrall is in her company.  She comes back into my memories now, just as she came back then, rather quaintly at first—­at first not seen very clearly, a little distorted by intervening things, seen with a doubt, as I saw her through the slightly discolored panes of crinkled glass in the window of the Menton post-office and grocer’s shop.  It was on the second day after the Change, and I had been sending telegrams for Melmount, who was making arrangements for his departure for Downing Street.  I saw the two of them at first as small, flawed figures.  The glass made them seem curved, and it enhanced and altered their gestures and paces.  I felt it became me to say “Peace” to them, and I went out, to the jangling of the door-bell.  At the sight of me they stopped short, and Verrall cried with the note of one who has sought, “Here he is!” And Nettie cried, “Willie!”

I went toward them, and all the perspectives of my reconstructed universe altered as I did so.

I seemed to see these two for the first time; how fine they were, how graceful and human.  It was as though I had never really looked at them before, and, indeed, always before I had beheld them through a mist of selfish passion.  They had shared the universal darkness and dwarfing of the former time; they shared the universal exaltation of the new.  Now suddenly Nettie, and the love of Nettie, a great passion for Nettie, lived again in me.  This change which had enlarged men’s hearts had made no end to love.  Indeed, it had enormously enlarged and glorified love.  She stepped into the center of that dream of world reconstruction that filled my mind and took possession of it all.  A little wisp of hair had blown across her cheek, her lips fell apart in that sweet smile of hers; her eyes were full of wonder, of a welcoming scrutiny, of an infinitely courageous friendliness.