Anne let her mind dwell gratefully upon the quiet happy years she had spent at Dymfield.
She thought of her work among her flowers, and the paradise of beauty it had produced. She thought of the poorer village people whose lives she knew, whose children she loved, to whom for years she had been a friend. She remembered her little plans for their welfare, all the pleasant trifles which made up the sum of her daily existence.
And as she mused, came a wondering recognition of the healing of time, the passing of all violent emotion, whether of joy or of despair.
From some recess of her memory there sprang the words of an Eastern sage, who as a motto true alike in times of sorrow and times of delight, told his disciple to grave upon his signet ring, one sentence—This too will pass.
XXI
Anne started for London next morning, intending to spend the night in town, and devote the next day to her brother, and to Sylvia Carfax, to whom she had not found time to write.
Early on Thursday morning she drove to Carlisle House.
The page boy who took her up in the lift, indicated a door at the end of the corridor, and left her.
Anne knocked, and in response to a voice within, entered Sylvia’s bedroom.
It was littered with cardboard boxes, open trunks, dresses, hats, raiment of all sorts, and stumbling over the obstacles in her way, Sylvia rushed towards her with a cry of joy.