Afterwards, long afterwards, John remembered that hour with the feeling as of a Paradise lost, that had been only half realized at the time. He wondered how he had borne such happiness so easily; why no voice from heaven had warned him to speak then, or hereafter for ever hold his peace. And yet at the time it had seemed only the dawning of a coming day, the herald of a more sure and perfect joy to be. The prophetic conviction had been at the moment too deep for doubt that there would be many times like that.
"Many times," each thought, lying awake through the short winter night after the ball.
John had discovered that to be alternately absolutely certain of two opposite conclusions, without being able to remain in either, is to be in a state of doubt. He found he could bear that blister as ill as most men.
"I will speak to her the morning after the carnival," he said, "when all this tribe of people have gone. What is the day going to be like?"
He got up and unbarred his shutter, and looked out. The late grey morning was shivering up the sky. The stars were white with cold. The frost had wrought an ice fairyland on the lattice. While that fragile web held against the pane, the frost that wrapped the whole country would hold also.
CHAPTER II.
"A funeral morn is lit in heaven's hollow,
And pale the star-lights follow."
Christina Rossetti.
