Marie's artless piety, and filled with kindly feelings
towards all her neighbours, Anna stood at the end of the garden looking
over the low hedge that divided it from the marsh and the sea, and
thought that she had never seen a place where it would be so easy to be
good. Complete freedom from the wearisome obligations of society, an
ideal privacy surrounded by her woods and the water, a scanty population
of simple and devoted people--did not Dellwig shed tears at the
remembrance of his master?--every day spent here would be a day that
made her better, that would bring her nearer to that heaven in which all
good and simple souls dwelt while still on earth, the heaven of a serene
and quiet mind. Always she had longed to be good, and to help and
befriend those who had the same longing but in whom it had been
partially crushed by want of opportunity and want of peace. The healthy
goodness that goes hand in hand with happiness was what she meant; not
that tragic and futile goodness that grows out of grief, that lifts its
head miserably in stony places, that flourishes in sick rooms and among
desperate sorrows, and goes to God only because all else is lost. She
went round the house and crossed the road into the forest. The fresh
wind blew in her face, and shook down the drops from the branches on her
as she passed. The pine needles of other years made a thick carpet for
her feet. The sun gleamed through the straight trunks and warmed her.
The restless sighing overheard in the tree tops filled her ears with
sweetest music. "I do believe the place is pleased that I have come!"
she thought, with a happy laugh. She came to a clearing in the trees,
opening out towards the north, and she could see the flat fields and the
wide sky and the sunshine chasing the shadows across the vivid green
patches that she had learned were winter rye. A hole at her feet, where
a tree had been uprooted, still had snow in it; but the larks were
singing above in the blue, as though from those high places they could
see Spring far away in the south, coming up slowly with the first
anemones in her hands, her face turned at last towards the patient
north.

The strangest feeling of being for the first time in her life at home
came over Anna. This poor country, how sweet and touching it was. After
the English country, with its thickly scattered villages, and gardens,
and fields that looked like parks, it did seem very poor and very empty,
but intensely lova