Ii8 UNDER THE TREES. 



aisles arched by the mighty trees, and of the 

 splendid pageant that should make life seem as 

 great and rich as Nature herself. I confess that 

 all my dreams came to one ending ; that I should 

 suddenly awake in some golden hour and really 

 know Rosalind. Of course I had been coming 

 through all these years to know something about 

 Rosalind ; but in this busy world, with work to be 

 done, and bills to be paid, and people to be seen, 

 and journeys to be made, and friction and worry 

 and fatigue to be borne, how can we really come 

 to know one another ? We may meet the vicissi 

 tudes and changes side by side ; we may work 

 together in the long days of toil ; our hearts may 

 repose on a common trust, our thoughts travel a 

 common road ; but how rarely do we come to the 

 hour when the pressure of toil is removed, the 

 clouds of anxiety melt into blue sky, and in the 

 whole world nothing remains but the sun on the 

 flower, and the song in the trees, and the unclouded 

 light of love in the eyes ? 



I dreamed, too, that in finding Rosalind I should 

 also find myself. There were times when I had 

 seemed on the very point of making this discovery, 

 but something had always turned me aside when 

 the quest was most eager and promising ; the 

 world pressed into the seclusion for which I had 

 struggled, and when I waited to hear its faintest 

 murmur die in the distance, suddenly the tumult 

 had risen again, and the dream of self-communion 



