An interruption in the routine of their Fulham life occurred after Keith had served the missionary society for a period of five years. An illness which manifested, as well as increased, his physical inability to continue in his difficult duties brought Keith and Anna to a sudden course of action. Keith resigned his official position, and, as soon as he was able to travel, they sailed for Europe for a year’s absence.
This was a year of rapid development and of abounding happiness to Anna. Alone and unguarded in their life together for the first time since their marriage, the husband and wife grew together in new sympathy, and fed their spirits on the beauty and wonder of art and the majesty of nature in fond accord. The fulness and richness and complexity of the working of the human spirit throughout the ages were revealed to Anna; the grandeur and purity of dedicated lives of creeds unlike and even hostile to her own opened her eyes to a new and broader view of human and divine relations. Reverence, love, and sympathy began to usurp the place of dogma, division, and exclusion in her mental energies. She began to perceive that the righteous were not wholly righteous, nor the wicked wholly wicked. The old ground plan of the moral universe with which she had started in life looked now a mean and narrow thing. Larger hopes and a bolder faith awoke in her.
And so in mind, and also in body, Anna grew joyously and freely; even her attitudes and motions expressed a new harmony, while suavity and grace of outline succeeded to the meagre and angular proportions of her youth.
The return to Fulham came, when it could no longer be postponed, as an unwelcome period to their best year of life. Madam Burgess received her children with affectionate, albeit restrained, cordiality, and watched Anna with keen eyes on which no change, however slight, was lost.
When mother and son were left alone on the night of the return, as on the night when Keith brought his wife home a bride, Madam Burgess spoke plainly and directly of Anna. She had never discussed her characteristics from that night until the present, but she felt that another epoch was reached, and a few remarks would be appropriate.
“My son,” she said, “do you remember the night when you brought Anna home to this house as a bride?”
“Perfectly, mother.”
“So do I. I have been going back continually in thought to-night to that time. Without undue partiality, Keith, I think we are justified in a little self-congratulation. Anna has developed slowly, but she has now reached the first and best bloom of her maturity. You brought her here a shy, angular, country-bred, undeveloped girl, although I will not deny that she had distinction, even then; to-night you bring her again not only a distingué but a beautiful woman,—yes, Keith, I really mean it,—a beautiful woman, and with a certain charm about her which makes her capable of being a social leader, if she chooses to exert her power. I understand she has purchased some good gowns in Paris. I have about concluded to give a reception next month in honour of your return, if my health permits.”
The reception, which Madam Burgess’s health was favoured to permit, proved to be as brilliant an event as social conditions in Fulham rendered possible. The fine old house was radiant with flowers and wax-lights, and the company which was gathered was the most distinguished which the little city could muster. In the midst of all the gay array stood Keith and Anna,—he with his small, slight figure, his scrupulously gentlemanly air, his thin, worn face and nervous manner; she tall and stately, with her characteristic repose illuminated by new springs of thought, perception, and feeling, full of swift and radiant response to each newcomer’s word, overflowing with the first fresh joy of her awakened social instinct.
Professor Ward stood with Pierce Everett aside, and, watching Anna, said in a lowered voice:—