reams of the night and the day.

It was autumn in my old garden, damp and forsaken, and the
mulberry-tree was hung with little yellow shields. My books looked
weary of awaiting me, and they and the whole lonely house begged me to
take them where sometimes they might be handled by human fingers,
mellowed by lamplight, cheered by friendly laughter.

The very chairs begged mutely to be sat upon, the chill white beds to
be slept in. Yes, the very furniture seemed even lonelier than myself.

So I took heed of their dumb appeal.

"I know," I answered them tenderly,--"I too, with you, have looked on
better days, I too have been where bells have knoll'd to church, I too
have sat at many a good man's feast,--yes! I miss human society, even
as you, my books, my bedsteads, and my side-boards,--so let it be. It
is plain our little Margaret is not coming back, our little Margaret,
dear haunted rooms, will never come back; no longer shall her little
silken figure flit up and down your quiet staircases, her hands filled
with flowers, and her heart humming with little songs. Yes, let us go,
it is very lonely; we shall die if we stay here all so lonely together;
it is time, let us go."

So thereon I wrote to a furniture-remover, and went out to walk round
the mossy old garden for the last time, and say good-bye to the great
mulberry, under whose Dodonaesque shade we had sat half frightened on
starry nights, to the apple-trees whose blossom had seemed like
fairy-land to Margaret and me, town-bred folk, to the apricots and the
peaches and the nectarines that it had seemed almost wicked to own,--as
though we had gone abroad in silk and velvet,--to the little grassy
orchard, and to the little green corner of it, where Margaret had
fallen asleep that summer afternoon, in the great wicker-chair, and I
had brought a dear friend on tiptoe to gaze on her asleep, with her
olive cheeks delicately flushed, her great eyelids closed like the
cheeks of roses, and her gold hair tumbled about her neck...

Well, well, good-bye,--tears are foolish things. They will not bring
Margaret back. Good-bye, old garden, good-bye, I shall never see you
again,--good-bye.

BOOK IV

THE POSTSCRIPT TO A PILGRIMAGE

CHAPTER I

SIX YEARS AFTER

This book is like a woman's letter. The most important part of it is
the postscript.

Six years lie between the end of the last chapter and the beginning of
this. Meanwhile, I had moved to sociable