A JOURNEY TO NATURE 



it. The benignity of a graciously enforced loafing 

 period never dawned on me until I began to pick 

 up some of its surprises. My first discovery was 

 that I could look myself in the face without being 

 frightened. There s nothing so very dreadful 

 about you when you re left to your own resources, 

 I said. Then I began to discover the sanitation 

 of uneventfulness. This life was a sort of homoeo 

 pathic application of death itself as a prophylactic 

 of death, just as sleep is. To lie still for a while 

 on this great breast of the universe and hear the 

 mother breathe is suspensive but restorative. 



I found myself at various sly times trying to 

 find out if Griselle was pretty, and I was generally 

 baffled by the equally sly suspicion that she knew 

 what I was up to. Her first appearance on the 

 scene had been in the centre of an enormous arm 

 ful of lilacs, carelessly plucked as she crossed the 

 field from the old Hotchkiss &quot; Folly,&quot; and ever 

 after she was associated in my mind with the 

 spring odour of lilacs. She wore her rustic airs 

 with the same superiority that a Niobe would 

 give to her tears. She floated in and out of that 

 homely little domicile not unlike an ordinary 

 butterfly, always appearing to be a great deal 

 more gossamer and ethereal than she really was, 

 and creating the strange fantasy that it was her 

 special duty in life to keep up that odour of lilacs. 

 This girl element of the exile was very insidious. 

 It had the soft, whelming quality of a summer 

 cloud, that we have the best authority for saying 

 never excites our special wonder. 



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