The spring--a second spring--was all about her; but in this chilly northern form it spoke to her with none of the ravishment of Italy. In the steep fields above her the narcissuses were bent and bowed with rain; the red-browns of the walnuts glistened in the wet gleams of sun; the fading apple-blossom beside her wore a melancholy beauty; only in the rich, pushing grass, with its wealth of flowers and its branching cow-parsley, was there the stubborn life and prophecy of summer. Suddenly Julie caught up the book that lay beside her and opened it with a hasty hand. It was one of that set of Saint-Simon which had belonged to her mother, and had already played a part in her own destiny. She turned to the famous "character" of the Dauphin, of that model prince, in whose death Saint-Simon, and Fénelon, and France herself, saw the eclipse of all great hopes. "A prince, affable, gentle, humane, patient, modest, full of compunctions, and, as much as his position allowed--sometimes beyond it--humble, and severe towards himself." Was it not to the life? "_Affable, doux, humain--patient, modeste--humble et austère pour soi_"--beyond what was expected, beyond, almost, what was becoming? She read on to the mention of the Dauphine, terrified, in her human weakness, of so perfect a husband, and trying to beguile or tempt him from the heights; to the picture of Louis Quatorze, the grandfather, shamed in his worldly old age by the presence beside him of this saintly and high-minded youth; of the Court, looking forward with dismay to the time when it should find itself under the rule of a man who despised and condemned both its follies and its passions, until she reached that final rapture, where, in a mingled anguish and adoration, Saint-Simon bids eternal farewell to a character and a heart of which France was not worthy. The lines passed before her, and she was conscious, guiltily conscious, of reading them with a double mind. Then she closed the book, held by the thought of her husband--in a somewhat melancholy reverie. There is a Catholic word with which in her convent youth she had been very familiar--the word _recueilli_--"recollected." At no time had it sounded kindly in her ears; for it implied fetters and self--suppressions--of the voluntary and spiritual sort--wholly unwelcome to and unvalued by her own temperament. But who that knew him well could avoid applying it to Delafield? A man of "recollection" living in the eye of the Eternal; keeping a guard over himself in the smallest matters of thought and action; mystically possessed by the passion of a spiritual ideal; in love with charity, purity, simplicity of life. She bowed her head upon her hands in dreariness of spirit. Ultimately, what could such a man want with her? What had she to give him? In what way could she ever be _necessary_ to him? And a woman, even in friendship, must feel herself that to be happy.