go into exile from his presence, without a hope that this the noblest and most aspiring life that had ever approached her might be something more than a star to worship?  If wealth comes, we wonder how we drew breath in poverty; yet we lived, and should have lived on.  Let the gods be thanked, whom it pleases to clothe the soul with joy which is superfluous to bare existence Might she not now hallow herself to be a true priestess of beauty?  Would not life be vivid with new powers and possibilities?  Even as that heaven was robing itself in glory of sunrise, with warmth and hue which strengthened her again to overcome anxieties.  Was he waking?  Was he impatient for the hour of his meeting with her?  She would stand face to face with him in the full Sunlight this time, but with what deep humility!  Should she be able to find words?  She had scarcely spoken to him, ever, as yet, and now there was more to say than hours of solitude would leave time for.  She knew not whether to bid the sun linger or speed.

There was nothing unusual in her rising and going forth early, though perhaps she had never issued from the house quite so early as this morning; it was not yet six o’clock when she gently closed the garden-gate behind her, and walked along the road which led on to the common.  The sun had already warmed the world, and the sheen of earth and heaven was at its brightest; the wind sweeping from the downs was like the breath of creation, giving life to forms of faultless beauty.  Emily’s heart lacked no morning hymn; every sense revelled in that pure joy which is the poetry of praise.  She wished it had been near the hour of meeting, yet again was glad to have time to prepare herself.  Walking, she drank in the loveliness about her, marked the forms of trees, the light and shade of heavy leafage, the blendings of colour by the roadside, the grace of remote distances; all these things she was making part of herself, that in memory they might be a joy for ever.  It is the art of life to take each moment of mental joy, of spiritual openness, as though it would never be repeated, to cling to it as a pearl of great price, to exhaust its possibilities of sensation.  At the best, such moments will be few amid the fateful succession of common cares, of lassitudes, of disillusions.  Emily had gone deep enough in thought already to understand this; in her rapture there was no want of discerning consciousness.  If this morning were to be unique in her life, she would have gained from it all that it had to give.  Those subtle fears, spiritual misgivings, which lurked behind her perceptions would again have their day, for it was only by striving that she had attained her present modes of thought; her nature concealed a darker strain, an instinct of asceticism, which had now and again predominated, especially in the period of her transition to womanhood, when the material conditions of her life were sad and of little hope.  It was no spirit of unreflective joy that now dwelt within her, but the more human happiness extorted from powers which only yield to striving.  Hitherto her life’s morning had been but cold and grey; she had trained herself to expect no breaking forth of gleams from the sober sky.  This sudden splendour might be transitory.