_August 8th._ Days of rain on the parched earth. Gray days, with soft mists heaped against the mountains, blending earth and sky in one. Days when one’s horizon is lost—not gone, but withdrawn from sight; days when the mountains have vanished and the valleys melted away, and nothing is very clear to consciousness but this small bed and the pain which lies upon it. If mists crept as close about one’s inner vision, doubt would seem normal on days like this, and despair the quintessence of common sense. Yet under the veiling vapors the brown grass is growing green again, the hard earth soft, instinct with power, and prodigal of gifts once more. Now comes a distant roll of thunder, a wind that sweeps the vapors from the grass as tears are wiped from sodden eyes, a flash of blinding light, a bending and tossing of leaf-laden boughs; and over the mountain the storm-cloud rises, black against the pale gray of the sky. Then up the valley comes the wall of water; and behind it the world is new. * * * * * A special delivery letter from the Peon! Caro stood by while I opened it, asking nothing, but her color coming and going. It was only a few lines; but it said he would be here on the tenth. He has written not a word since he has been out there about the things nearest to all our hearts; but at least we shall know something in two days more. XII IN THE GARDEN OF DELIGHT _August 10th._ They are having a picnic supper on Bare Rock this evening, from which nobody in the house is excused but myself. I am glad they are all gone, for I need a little solitude, in this sudden whirlwind of happiness, to catch my breath and take a twist on my emotions. For the Peon, who is so literally truthful that nobody dares to suspect him of juggling with words, deliberately stole a march on us and walked in twenty-four hours ahead of time—with David! Caro and I were over in the Garden. I was just where I am now, between the altheas and the locusts; but Caro, who had been wandering restlessly about, had gone down the hillside, out of sight, following an unknown bird-note. I was looking at the poplar branch where the caterpillars had clustered. They had left it stripped of everything but the leaf-stalks, which stood out now from the bare twigs at every angle, like drunken pins in a cushion. But the birds had days ago avenged both the branch and me, for not a crawler was visible on the tree. I was looking at it idly when the Peon and David suddenly stood under it, coming round the big bed of hydrangeas between it and the gate! I scarcely saw the Peon for looking at David; but David was looking for somebody else. “Where’s Caro?” he demanded, as he kissed me. “They said at the house she was over here with you.” “She’s beyond that little corner of woods,” I said; “go around there and you’ll see her.”