I told her my love. She was not angry or indifferent. She did not reject it. She was afraid. They sent her away to college. She overworked and overplayed, and they have told me she is now a schoolmistress. I see her sad and firm with folded hands. When I knew her she was tall and straight, with long brown hair in two heavy plaits, a shining, rounded brow, dark-lashed, grey eyes, and a smile of inexpressible sweetness in which I once or twice surprised her, pleased with the happiness and beauty of her thoughts and of Nature. “When I had lost her, or thought I had-- Not comforted to live But that there is this jewel in the world Which I may see again---- I resolved that I would not be a slave any more. For a few weeks I used to fancy it was only by a chance I had lost her, and every now and then as I mused over it I got heated and my thoughts raced forward as if in the hope of overtaking and averting that very evil chance which had already befallen, and had in fact caused the train of thought. “I saved every penny that I could from my salary. In six months I had saved twenty pounds. Out of this I bought a new black suit, a pair of boots and a hat, and gave them to my landlady and asked her to take care of them until I returned, which might be at the end of October. It was then April. I gave notice to my employers and left them. The next day very early I left London, and walked all day and all night until I reached the sea. There I bathed and ate a hearty meal, and walking along the cliffs till I came to a small farmhouse I engaged a bedroom, and there I slept and thought and slept undisturbed for twenty-four hours. I was free. I was free to dream myself no longer one of the mob-led mob. With care my money would last until mid-summer, even if I did no work. “It was a warm, wet May, and by the end of the month there was a plentiful crop of weeds, and I had no difficulty in getting work at hoeing. Strawberry picking and cherry picking followed. I was very slow and earned little, but it was now warm enough to sleep out, and I earned my food. By the end of July, as I liked the work, I was as useful with my hayrake as any of the women and better than most of the odd hands. I wore my fingers raw at tying up barley and oats and, later on, at feeding the threshing machine. But before the end of October the weather drove me back to London, with ten shillings in my pocket. “I put on my new clothes and got as good a berth as my first one, and in the hope of another spring and summer out of doors I passed the winter cheerfully. To save more money I went to bed as soon as I got back to my lodgings, and read myself to sleep.