eemed to
him like a spirit, and isn't the spring like a spirit? She was there in
the cow-parsley just coming up, and the sight of the campions between
the white spangles reminded him of the pink flowers she wore in her hat.
The underwood was full of bluebells, but her eyes were not blue. The
aspens were still brown, but in a month the dull green leaves, silvery
underneath, would be fluttering at the end of their long stems. And the
continual agitation of the aspen-leaf seemed to him rather foolish,
reminding him of a weak-minded woman clamouring for sympathy always. The
aspen was an untidy tree; he was not sure that he liked the tree, and if
one is in doubt whether one likes or dislikes, the chances are that one
dislikes. Who would think of asking himself if he liked beech-trees, or
larches, or willows? A little later he stood lost in admiration of a
line of willows all a-row in front of a stream; they seemed to him like
girls curtseying, and the delicacy of the green and yellow buds induced
him to meditate on the mysteries that common things disclose.

Seeing a bird disappear into a hole in the wall, he climbed up. The bird
pecked at him, for she was hatching. 'A starling,' he said. In the field
behind his house, under the old hawthorn-tree, an amiable-looking donkey
had given birth to a foal, and he watched the little thing, no bigger
than a sheep, covered with long gray hair ... There were some
parishioners he would be sorry to part with, and there was Catherine. If
he went away he would never see her again, nor those who lived in the
village. All this present reality would fade, his old church,
surrounded with gravestones and stunted Scotch firs, would become like a
dream, every year losing a little in colour and outline. He was going,
he did not know when, but he was going. For a long time the feeling had
been gathering in him that he was going, and her letter increased that
feeling. He would go just as soon as a reputable way of leaving his
parish was revealed to him.

By the help of his reason he could not hope to find out the way. Nothing
seemed more impossible than that a way should be found for him to leave
his parish without giving scandal; but however impossible things may
seem to us, nothing is impossible to Nature. He must put his confidence
in Nature; he must listen to her. She would tell him. And he lay all the
afternoon listening to the reeds and the ducks talking together in the
lake. Very often the w