"Autumn had dressed the old town in sober suits of brown, laced with yellow and red; there was a sharp tang in the salt sea air that sent the blood dancing. The smell of the ripe apples, crushed by the cider-presses, pervaded the orchards, and in the fields the stacked dried corn showed the unsuspected wealth of golden pumpkins that grew between rows. Out in the woods the ferns had grown wan and pale, and the fading leaves began to carpet the dead summer's undergrowth. Day after day the officer and the lady rode away from the tree-shaded streets to the silent autumn forests where silver-gray oak-boles upheld canopies of brown velvet leaves. The gumtrees burned like fire, and the hickory and sassafras gleamed golden over the red sumach and whortleberry that made the old fields seem deluged with the blood of some mighty battle. At times the long lines of homing ducks would pass them, or a V of wild geese would sweep over their heads, crying 'honk-honk!'" "Evening had come on, and the bare boughs were etched black against a lemon-colored sky, which melted into orange where it kissed the horizon." "The rosy glow in the west faded to ashen gray as the day burned itself out." "Autumn followed, spreading its rich India carpet of leaves before the retreating footsteps of the dying year." "Again the dawn swept up out of the sea, rosy and clear; she could see the pink light of a new day on the western walls of the passage." "He labored under the oppressive aloofness begotten by sorrow, which endows even the most familiar objects with a strangeness borrowed from the new relation that we thenceforth bear to our dead selves. The old landmarks seemed to be obliterated by the torrents of his anguish and he felt no more of the balm he anticipated from a sense of homecoming than he might have experienced in entering any wayside tavern. His disease created a spiritual alienation from all things, and in his heart, like the Jewish lepers, he cried out perpetually, 'Unclean! unclean!' proclaiming his eternal separation from humanity." "There were all sorts of half-fledged thoughts nestling in his heart as he strode out into the night."