came down the ladder and stepped along the garden paths more like a fairy being than a mortal, and I always enjoyed the event twice as much when she accompanied me. In the day-time she faded back into the dull elder sister and seemed a different person altogether. I never reconcile the two.
This childish manifestation of an overpowering passion changed later, in form, of course, but not essentially much in spirit. Forests, mountains, desolate places, especially perhaps open spaces like the prairies or the desert, but even, too, the simple fields, the lanes, and little hills, offered an actual sense of companionship no human intercourse could possibly provide. In times of trouble, as equally in times of joy, it was to Nature I ever turned instinctively. In those moments of deepest feeling when individuals must necessarily be alone, yet stand at the same time in most urgent need of understanding companionship, it was Nature and Nature only that could comfort me. When the cable came, suddenly announcing my father's death, I ran straight into the woods.... This call sounded above all other calls, music coming so far behind it as to seem an "also ran." Even in those few, rare times of later life, when I fancied myself in love, this spell would operate--a sound of rain, a certain touch of colour in the sky, the scent of a wood-fire smoke, the lovely cry of some singing wind against the walls or window--and the human appeal would fade in me, or, at least, its transitory character become pitifully revealed. The strange sense of a oneness with Nature was an imperious and royal spell that over-mastered all other spells, nor can the hint of comedy lessen its reality. Its religious origin appears, perhaps, in the fact that sometimes, during its fullest manifestation, a desire stirred in me to leave a practical, utilitarian world I loathed and become--a monk!
Another effect, in troubled later years especially, was noticeable; its dwarfing effect upon the events, whatever they might be, of daily life. So intense, so flooding, was the elation of joy Nature brought, that after such moments
even the gravest worldly matters, as well as the people
