"So that's all you've come for! Oh, oh! But I'm not like that at all. Why can't you leave me alone? I'm not hurting you." Am I one who understands women? Self-deception. Vain boasting. I made my presence known then because her weeping sounded so wretched; I moved a chair and cleared my throat. The sound caught his attention at once, and he hushed her, trying to listen; but she said: "No, it was nothing...." But she knew very well this was not true; she knew what the sound was. It was not the first time Miss Torsen used this trick with me; she had often pretended that she thought I was not within hearing, and then created some such delicate situation. Each time I had promised myself not to intervene; but she had not wept before; now she wept. Why did she use these wiles? To clear herself in my eyes--mine, the eyes of a settled man--to make me believe how good she was, how well-behaved! But, dear child, I knew that before; I could see it from your hands! You are so unnatural that in your seven and twentieth year, you walk unmarried, barren and unopen! The pair drifted away. And there is something else I cannot finish doing: withdrawing into solitude in the woods, alone with the good darkness round me. This is the last pleasure. One needs solitude and darkness, not because one flees the company of others and can endure only one's own, but because of their quality of loftiness and religion. Strange how all things pass distantly, yet all is near; we sit in an omnipresence. It must be God. It must be ourselves as a part of all things. What would my heart, where would I stray? Shall I leave the forest behind me? It was my home but yesterday; now toward the city I wend my way; to the darkness of night I've resigned me. The world round me sleeps as I tarry, alone, soothing my ear with its quiet. How large and gray is the city of stone in which the many all hopes enthrone! Shall I, too, accept their fiat? Hark! Do the bells ring on the hillside? Back to the peace of the forest I turn in the nightly hour that's hoarest. There's a sweet-smelling hedgerow to which I yearn; I shall rest my head on heather and fern, and sleep in the depths of the forest. Hark, how the bells ring on the hillside! Romantic? Yes. Mere sentimentality, mood, rhyme--nothing? Yes. It is the last happiness. XXIII The sun has returned. Not darkly glowing and regal--more than that: imperial, because it is flaming. This you do not understand, my friend, whatever the language in which it is dished up for you. But I say there is an imperial sun in the sky. It's a good day for going to the woods; it is sweeping time, for the woods are full of yellow things that have come suddenly into being. A short time ago they were not there, or I did not see them, or they had the earth's own complexion. There is something unborn about them, like embryos in an early stage. But if I whirl them about, they are miracles of fulfillment.