But to John the village had been suspended in a sort of crystal of memory since ever he left, and, although he knew this was impossible, he half expected he should find it so suspended, only to be restored to the current of a progressive existence on his return. He travelled by night, as busy men do, and he could almost have believed that this fancy was real, when he arrived in the early morning and found the houses still half asleep, opening their eyes and shutters, awaking to life as he came back. He had put his portmanteau on the omnibus (which was something new; there had been no omnibus when he left), and walked across the common in the early glory of the morning, everything so fresh and sweet around him. The hedgerow on the one side, and the tufts of bushes and low trees on the other, were all glistening with the early dew. There were many fine things in London, and the trees in the parks were looking their best and freshest in the May weather, but John reflected that either there was no dew there, or else it fell when nobody knew, or--a still less poetical explanation, it became so black with the soot in it that it was more like ink than dew upon the leaves. But here it was a sort of elixir of life, so pure and glistening, every drop like a little heaven. He walked on slowly, willing to put off the realisation of the world he had known so well, now that he found this world so near to him. A thousand nameless odours seemed to be going up to heaven: the smell of the fresh earth, of the growing grass, of the heather that began to push upward in strong green bushes, of the gorse unfolding its honey blossoms, of the sweet briar in the hedge: and along with all these an indefinite sweetness of the morning which could not be explained, which was partly physical and partly spiritual, a sweetness that went into the very soul. John could not but remember the many times he had come along this way: but his recollections were winterly, or they were pictures of the night, when the village lights had been shining, and the common lost in the darkness. Above all he recollected the silent drives he had taken with his mother to and fro, when he had met her for the first time, when he had disowned her and called her Emily, a memory which made his cheek burn and sting; but it was not his fault. He did not think of her as Emily any longer. He respected her and all she said and did: but his heart was not much nearer to her than when he had sat by her side with his head turned the other way, in a concentrated still opposition to her and all her ways.