With recovery from his physical ill-being came a new mental restlessness; the return, rather, of a mood which had always assailed him when he lost for a time his ideal hope.  He demanded of life the joy natural to his years; revolted against the barrenness of his lot.  A terror fell upon him lest he should be fated never to know the supreme delight of which he was capable, and for which alone he lived.  Even now was he not passing his prime, losing the keener faculties of youth?  He trembled at the risks of every day; what was his assurance against the common ill-hap which might afflict him with disease, blight his life with accident, so that no woman’s eye could ever be tempted to rest upon him?  He cursed the restrictions which held him on a straight path of routine, of narrow custom, when a world of possibilities spread about him on either hand, the mirage of his imprisoned spirit.  Adventurous projects succeeded each other in his thoughts.  He turned to the lands where life was freer, where perchance his happiness awaited him, had he but the courage to set forth.  What brought him to London, this squalid blot on the map of the round world?  Why did he consume the irrecoverable hours amid its hostile tumult, its menacing gloom?

On the first Sunday in September he aroused himself to travel by an early train, which bore him far into the country.  He had taken a ticket at hazard for a place with a pleasant-sounding name, and before village bells had begun to ring he was wandering in deep lanes amid the weald of Sussex.  All about him lay the perfect loveliness of that rural landscape which is the old England, the true England, the England dear to the best of her children.  Meadow and copse, the yellow rank of new-reaped sheaves, brown roofs of farm and cottage amid shadowing elms, the grassy borders of the road, hedges with their flowered creepers and promise of wild fruit —­these things brought him comfort.  Mile after mile he wandered, losing himself in simplest enjoyment, forgetting to ask why he was alone.  When he felt hungry, an inn supplied him with a meal.  Again he rambled on, and in a leafy corner found a spot where he could idle for an hour or two, until it was time to think of the railway station.

He had tired himself; his mind slipped from the beautiful things around him, and fell into the old reverie.  He murmured the haunting name—­Irene.  As well as for her who bore it, he loved the name for its meaning.  Peace!  As a child he had been taught that no word was more beautiful, more solemn; at this moment, he could hear it in his father’s voice, sounding as a note of music, with a tremor of deep feeling.  Peace!  Every year that passed gave him a fuller understanding of his father’s devotion to that word in all its significance; he himself knew something of the same fervour, and was glad to foster it in his heart.  Peace!  What better could a man pursue?  From of old the desire of wisdom, the prayer of the aspiring soul.