“I was thinking of going up to Derryaghy,” I answered, with an assumption of carelessness that did not prevent my noting the immediate change that came into his face. “Had you planned anything?” I asked hastily. “No, no.” “Perhaps you would like to go for a walk?” “No, no. Please yourself,” he replied. So I went up to Derryaghy, with a guilty sense that I had hurt his feelings. It was a pity that I should have begun in this fashion; that I could not, for once, have been cheerfully and spontaneously unselfish, but my longing to get back to my old haunts was intense, and I yielded to it. After all, when I reached Derryaghy, Mrs. Carroll was not there. She had left a message for me to say that she had been obliged to go up to town, but that she hoped I should be able to dine with her at the usual hour. I wandered out into the winter woods, beautiful with the strange and delicate beauty of naked trees. I loved this place really with a kind of passion, and I was glad my father was not here, glad that I was alone. Dark slender branches traced fantastic arabesques against the grey sky above my head. The black- and silver-stemmed birches gave the note that was carried out through all the colouring. Only the fir-trees, laurels, and an occasional holly-tree, were green. I loved the woods in winter; they seemed to me to have then a peculiar grace they did not possess at any other season. And the wind whistled so hollowly in the leafless trees, and the darting birds were so black against the sky, and all was so silent and solitary, with a sort of frozen loveliness, that I could conceive of nothing more beautiful even in the green pomp and splendour of summer. And behind everything was a vision of long, lamp-lit, fire-lit evenings, with dreamy, delicious books. The leaves of the laurels and holly were coated with frost; the dead fronds of the bracken were a dull brown; here and there the sombre colouring was splashed with the red leaves of brambles. There was a hint of approaching snow in the air, there was almost a silence of snow, and I seemed to feel it drawing closer to me through the cold, remote sky. The ground was hard as iron. Sometimes a single leaf, pallid and faded, trembled still at the end of a twig, but almost all the leaves that were going to fall had fallen long ago. I saw the flash of fur, brown and white, in the frozen grass, but Tony, who followed at my heels, was indifferent to rabbits.