In April came a foretaste of summer, and, for an hour or two every day, he was able to hobble downstairs. He perceived the box at once, lying in its accustomed place, and concluded that on learning that he was out of danger, she had sent it back to him. The sight of it cheered him with indefinable hope: it seemed to signify a fresh token of her faith in him: it had travelled with her back to Cockermouth on that wonderful day which had brought them together; and now, in his eyes, it was invested with a new preciousness. He unlocked it, and, somehow, to discover that its contents had not been disturbed, was a keen disappointment. He longed for proof that she had been curious to look into it, that she had thus been able to realise how he had prized every tiny object that had been consecrated for him by her. Then it flashed across him that she herself might have brought the box back, and fearing to disturb him, had gone home again without asking to see him. All that evening he brooded over this supposition; yet shrank from putting any question to Mrs. Parkin. But the following morning, a sudden impulse overcame his repugnance; and the next moment he had learned the truth. Untouched, unmoved, the box had remained all the while--she had never taken it--she had forgotten it. And depression swept through him; for it seemed that his ideal had tottered. His prolonged isolation and his physical lassitude had quickened his emotions to an abnormal sensibility, and had led him to a constant fingering, as it were, of his successive sentimental phases. And these, since they constituted his sole diversion, he had unconsciously come to regard as of supreme importance. The cumbersome, complex details of life in the outside world had assumed the simplification of an indistinct background: in his vision of her figure he had perceived no perspective. But now the grain of doubt was sown: it germinated insidiously; and soon, the whole complexion of his attitude towards her was transformed. All at once he saw a whole network of unforeseen obstacles, besetting each detail of the prospect he had been planning. Swarming uncertainty fastened on him at every turn; till at last, goaded to desperation, he stripped the gilding from the accumulated fabric of his idealised future. And then his passion for her flamed up--ardent, unreasoning, human. After all, he loved as other men loved--that was the truth: the rest was mere calfish meandering. Stubbornly he vindicated to himself his right to love her.... He was a man--a creature of flesh and blood, and every fibre within him was crying out for her--for the sight of her face; the sound of her voice; the clasp of her hand. Body and soul he loved her; body and soul he yearned for her.... She had come back to him--she was his again--with passionate tears she had told him that she loved him. To fight for her, he was ready to abandon all else. At the world’s laws he jibed bitterly; before God they were man and wife.