king me a saner man ever since. Her
manner turned my head, for it was so different from what I had expected.
To hear this lovely creature, who, in my imagination, was a heroine of
romance, if not of tragedy, talking familiarly and laughing readily was
more than my equanimity could bear, and I lost my head as well as my
heart. But when I went back to England in the spring, I went to make
certain arrangements at the Castle--certain changes and improvements
which would be absolutely necessary. I had won the race for which I had
entered myself so rashly, and we were to be married in June.

Whether the change was due to the orders I had left with the gardener
and the rest of the servants, or to my own state of mind, I cannot tell.
At all events, the old place did not look the same to me when I opened
my window on the morning after my arrival. There were the grey walls
below me, and the grey turrets flanking the huge building; there were
the fountains, the marble causeways, the smooth basins, the tall box
hedges, the water-lilies and the swans, just as of old. But there was
something else there, too--something in the air, in the water, and in
the greenness that I did not recognise--a light over everything by which
everything was transfigured. The clock in the tower struck seven, and
the strokes of the ancient bell sounded like a wedding chime. The air
sang with the thrilling treble of the songbirds, with the silvery music
of the plashing water and the softer harmony of the leaves stirred by
the fresh morning wind. There was a smell of new-mown hay from the
distant meadows, and of blooming roses from the beds below, wafted up
together to my window. I stood in the pure sunshine and drank the air
and all the sounds and the odours that were in it; and I looked down at
my garden and said: "It is Paradise, after all." I think the men of old
were right when they called heaven a garden, and Eden, a garden
inhabited by one man and one woman, the Earthly Paradise.

I turned away, wondering what had become of the gloomy memories I had
always associated with my home. I tried to recall the impression of my
nurse's horrible prophecy before the death of my parents--an impression
which hitherto had been vivid enough. I tried to remember my old self,
my dejection, my listlessness, my bad luck, and my petty
disappointments. I endeavoured to force myself to think as I used to
think, if only to satisfy myself that I had not lost my individuality