I had been in very tranquil spirits and strong health all the summer; my maladies had ceased to trouble me, and for weeks they were out of my thoughts. I had found a quiet zest in the little duties that make up my simple life. I had made, too, a new friend. A pleasant cottage about half a mile from Golden End had been taken by the widow of a clergyman with small but sufficient means, who settled there with her daughter, the latter being about twenty-four. I went somewhat reluctantly with my mother to call upon them and offer neighbourly assistance. I found myself at once in the presence of two refined, cultivated, congenial people. Mrs. Waring, I saw, was not only a well-read woman, interested in books and art, but she had seen something of society, and had a shrewd and humorous view of men and things. Miss Waring was like her mother; but I soon found that to her mother’s kindly and brisk intellect she added a peculiar and noble insight—that critical power, if I may call it so, which sees what is beautiful and true in life, and strips it of adventitious and superficial disguises in the same way that one with a high appreciation of literature moves instinctively to what is gracious and lofty, and is never misled by talent or unobservant of genius. The society of these two became to me in a few weeks a real and precious possession. I began to see how limited and self-centred my life had begun to be. They did not, so to speak, provide me with new sensations and new material so much as put the whole of life in a new light. I found in the mother a wise and practical counsellor, with a singular grasp of detail, with whom I could discuss any new book I had read or any article that had struck me; but with Miss Waring it was different. I can only say that her wise and simple heart cast a new light upon the most familiar thoughts. I found myself understood, helped, lifted, in a way that both humiliated and inspired me. Moreover, I was privileged to be admitted into near relations with one who seemed to show, without the least consciousness of it, the best and highest possibilities that lie in human nature. I cannot guess or define the secret. I only know that it dawned upon me gradually that here was a human spirit fed like a spring from the purest rains that fall on some purple mountain-head. [Sidenote: THE MOMENT]