Six weeks passed before the faint blue point of light which flickered on the wick began to turn white and show some strength.  At last, however, day by day, we marked a slight accession of vitality which increased with change of diet.  Every evening when I came home I was gladdened by the tidings which showed advance, and Ellen, I believe, was as much pleased to see how others rejoiced over her recovery as she was pleased for her own sake.  She, too, was one of those creatures who always generously admit improvement.  For my own part, I have often noticed that when I have been ill, and have been getting better, I have refused to acknowledge it, and that it has been an effort to me to say that things were not at their worst.  She, however, had none of this niggardly baseness, and always, if only for the sake of her friends, took the cheerful side.  Mrs. Taylor now left us.  She left us a friend whose friendship will last, I hope, as long as life lasts.  She had seen all our troubles and our poverty:  we knew that she knew all about us:  she had helped us with the most precious help—­what more was there necessary to knit her to us?—­and it is worth noting that the assistance which she rendered, and her noble self-sacrifice, so far from putting us, in her opinion, in her debt, only seemed to her a reason why she should be more deeply attached to us.

It was late in the autumn before Ellen had thoroughly recovered, but at last we said that she was as strong as she was before, and we determined to celebrate our deliverance by one more holiday before the cold weather came.  It was again Sunday—­a perfectly still, warm, autumnal day, with a high barometer and the gentlest of airs from the west.  The morning in London was foggy, so much so that we doubted at first whether we should go; but my long experience of London fog told me that we should escape from it with that wind if we got to the chalk downs away out by Letherhead and Guildford.  We took the early train to a point at the base of the hills, and wound our way up into the woods at the top.  We were beyond the smoke, which rested like a low black cloud over the city in the north-east, reaching a third of the way up to the zenith.  The beech had changed colour, and glowed with reddish-brown fire.  We sat down on a floor made of the leaves of last year.  At mid-day the stillness was profound, broken only by the softest of whispers descending from the great trees which spread over us their protecting arms.  Every now and then it died down almost to nothing, and then slowly swelled and died again, as if the Gods of the place were engaged in divine and harmonious talk.  By moving a little towards the external edge of our canopy we beheld the plain all spread out before us, bounded by the heights of Sussex and Hampshire.  It was veiled with the most tender blue, and above it was spread a sky which was white on the horizon and deepened by degrees into azure over our heads.  The exhilaration of the