The Christmas Day which followed this strange night proved the happiest that Morris could ever remember to have spent since his childhood. In his worldly circumstances of course he was oppressed by none of the everyday worries which at this season are the lot of most—no duns came to trouble him, nor through lack of means was he forced to turn any beggar from his door. Also the baby was much better, and Mary’s spirits were consequently radiant. Never, indeed, had she been more lovely and charming than when that morning she presented him with a splendid gold chronometer to take the place of the old silver watch which was his mother’s as a girl, and that he had worn all his life. Secretly he sorrowed over parting with that familiar companion in favour of its new eighty-guinea rival, although it was true that it always lost ten minutes a day, and sometimes stopped altogether. But there was no help for it; so he kissed Mary and was grateful. Moreover, the day was beautiful. In the morning they walked to church through the Abbey plantations, which run for nearly half a mile along the edge of the cliff. The rime lay thick upon the pines and firs—every little needle had its separate coat of white whereon the sun’s rays glistened. The quiet sea, too, shone like some gigantic emerald, and in the sweet stillness the song of a robin perched upon the bending bough of a young poplar sounded pure and clear. Yet it was not this calm and plenty, this glittering ocean flecked with white sails, and barred by delicate lines of smoke, this blue and happy sky, nor all the other good things that were given to him in such abundance, which steeped his heart in Sabbath rest. Although he sought no inspiration from such drugs, and, indeed, was a stranger to them, rather was his joy the joy of the opium-eater while the poison works; the joy of him who after suffering long nights of pain has found their antidote, and perhaps for the first time appreciates the worth of peace, however empty. His troubled heart had ceased its striving, his wrecked nerves were still, his questionings had been answered, his ends were attained; he had drunk of the divine cup which he desired, and its wine flowed through him. The dead had visited him, and he had tasted of the delight which lies hid in death. On that day he felt as though nothing could hurt him any more, nothing could even move him. The angry voices, the wars, the struggles, the questionings—all the things which torment mankind; what did they matter? He had forced the lock and broken the bar; if only for a little while, the door had opened, and he had seen that which he desired to see and sought with all his soul, and with the wondrous harvest of this pure, inhuman passion, that owes nothing to sex, or time, or earth, he was satisfied at last. “Why did you look so strange in church?” asked Mary as they walked home, and her voice echoed in the spaces of his void mind as words echo in an empty hall.