Stretching her tired limbs in the bed, that had nothing to-night in common with the rack, feeling natural sleep creep over her as it had long not done, she remembered with a vague joy that she was young; she divined a time ahead—perhaps not so far ahead either—when life would become possible again.
She felt as if cosily tucked in and kept warm by the sense of Fidele's affectionate appreciation, and the evident admiration of her friends, called in even on this first evening to greet her. It was good. It restored one's lost self-confidence.
The last thought Chloris was conscious of was not for Damon this once, but Demetrius. (Demetrius, I said. The reader here revolts. Chloris, Cytherea, a Chloe apparently still to come, and Fidele, Damon, Demetrius! Are these names to pass off on the discriminating reader in a tale that has nothing to do with the times of Theocritus or Addison? I confess it, I would have deceived. The persons in this story knew themselves by none of the names I have set down. They had been given at the font, and had by chance and inheritance come into, names that represented them far less well. Who can assume to fitly name a babe in arms? With a pure purpose I rechristened them. If you could know what, for instance, was the real name of Cytherea—But enough.)
On the next morning arises Chloris, constating with thankfulness that no more than the night before is her heart bleeding at every pore. Filled with a venerable feminine desire to still increase the favorable impression she is sure she has made on the inhabitants of this high hamlet, she does her hair more than ever engagingly, puts on her crispest white gown with the lavender ribbons, and her broad straw hat with roses—the hat Damon had praised in the early part of the season. Something stirs in her sleeping bosom at the remembrance; she pauses in her task of pinning it on; the green-gray eyes with the brown spots grow fixed upon a vision, small as if seen through the wrong end of the opera-glass: On a shining shore, two little figures setting out in a sail-boat—only two, for the cousin has pleaded the disagreeable effect on her of the motion of the sea. Chloris sits down discouraged, feeling the blood drop from her face, and her heart present her with as finished a pain as ever. "It really matters so very little," she murmurs, firmly restraining from wringing her hands; "I only—only should like to know how long this kind of thing may be supposed to last!"
Chloris and Fidele loiter about the garden full of morning sunshine, snipping off wet sweet-peas and roses, and reminding each other of things. Then, to please Chloris, they go for a stroll. Chloris is eager for a little climb. Heated and pleasantly tired, they come to the top of an eminence and sit down under the only clump of trees, in company of the unbudging horned cows, who know their claim is good, for they got there first. Fidele, leaning against a tree-trunk, fans herself more and more fitfully with her hat, and presently slumbers. Chloris, with her head in Fidele's lap, can never weary of looking off over the faint-hued valley which the shadows of clouds softly overstray. In this delicious bodily relaxation after hill-climbing in the sun, strange peace inundates her soul, and she entertains a superstition that it is flowing out to her from the mountains, and lies luxuriously, letting herself be done good to. "They know the secret of peace," she muses in her manner of a girl. "They cannot speak, but the effect of their knowledge radiates from them, and reaches us. The end of all—of all is peace. All works towards it incessantly, as one sees nature do towards harmony. Through these battles, to peace. Why can one not remember it down on the plain?" Now a cloud obscures the sun that gropes through it with long golden fingers; Chloris, dreaming, ponders half wistfully what it would be to remain here always, begin life anew, never return where one had suffered so much, and was surely so little missed!
On their way home the girls meet Demetrius in his chaise, on his rounds. He reins in, and leans out of the leathern hood; with arms alink the girls stand in the white road below, in a great bath of light. They converse a moment; Chloris's lifted face, with the stamp on it still of her high thinking on the hill-top, is like a flushed pearl under her rose-laden hat.
"You must let me show you the country," says Demetrius, before driving on.
When he is gone, Chloris and Fidele naturally fall to talking of him.
"How is it," says Chloris, "that a man so superior has attained his age and is merely a doctor in a place like this?"
"My dear, we have our ailments like the rest. You don't grudge us a good doctor? He was born here, and after a good number of years down in the haunts of men came back in a natural sort of way. His father left him property up here. He is not ambitious; he has an abundance of money. He practises more or less for the love of it, and something to do. He is our most presentable man, and I want you to appreciate our good points in him. He adores music; the piano I spoke of is his. He has invited us up there; as soon as you feel inclined we will go."