1 68 UNDER THE TREES. 



home-corning, but we set the house in order, we re 

 called to the.lonely rooms thfe bid associations, and 

 we Quietly took up the (/ares and burdens we had 

 dropped. It was not easy at first, and there were 

 days when we were both heartsore ; but we waited 

 and worked and hoped. Our neighbors found us 

 more silent and absorbed than of old, but neither 

 that change nor our absence seemed to have made 

 any impression upon them. Indeed, we even 

 doubted if they knew that we had taken such a jour 

 ney. Day by day we stepped into the old places and 

 fell into the old habits, until all the broken threads 

 of our life were reunited and we were apparently 

 as much a part of the world as if we had never gone 

 out of it and found a nobler and happier sphere. 



But there came to us gradually a clear conscious 

 ness that, though we were in the world, we were 

 not of it, nor ever again could be. It was no longer 

 our world ; its standards, its thoughts, its pleasures, 

 were not for us. We were not lonely in it ; on the 

 contrary, when the first impression of strangeness 

 wore off, we were happier than we had ever been in 

 the old days. Our reputation was no longer in the 

 breath of men ; our fortune was no longer at the 

 mercy of rising or falling markets ; our plans and 

 hopes were no longer subject to chance and change. 

 We had a possession in the Forest of Arden, and 

 we had friends and dreams there beyond the em 

 pire of time and fate. And when we compared the 

 security of our fortunes with the vicissitudes to 



