The little village—a summary of English life and custom, a symbol of the Saxon, the church steeple pointing through the elm trees, the villas with their various embellishment in the line of glass porticos and privet hedges, the General, Mrs. Horlick, Messrs Brookes and Berkins—how complete it seemed, how individual and how synthetical—his eyes filled with tears of unpremeditated grief. The leaves were falling, the hills were shrouded in wreaths of floating mist. Some trees had been cut down and scaffolding had been reared about the Manor House, some of the walls had already fallen revealing the wall paper, the pattern of which he could almost distinguish. He was going to the woman he loved, but he was leaving his youth behind, and those whom he had known as children, as girls, as women; he remembered all the gossip, all the quarrels, all the to-do about nothing; and now, looking on the beautiful garden where he had played and passioned in all varying moments of grief and glee, he re-lived the past; and leaning out of the carriage window he gazed fondly, and cried out: “Alas, those were Spring Days.”