He began to feel his heart drawn at times, in some strange, tenderer fashion, hitherto unknown to him, to the blue of the sky, especially in the first sweetness of a summer morning. His soul would now and then seem to go out of him, in a passion of embrace, to the simplest flower: the flower would be, for a moment, just its self to him. He would spread out his arms to the wind, now when it met him in its strength, now when it but kissed his face. He never consented with himself that it was one force in all the forms that drew him--that perhaps it was the very God, the All in all about him. Neither did he question much with himself as to how the development, rather than change, had begun. Whether God did this, or was this, or it was only the possessing Barbara that cast her light out of his eyes on the things he saw and felt, he scarcely asked; but fully he recognised the fact that Nature was more alive than she ever had been to him who had always loved her. The thought of Barbara went on growing dear to him. He never pondered anything but the girl herself, cherished no dreams of her becoming more to him, of her ever being nearer than away there; just to know her was now, and henceforward ever would be the gladness of his life. If that life was but for a season; if the very core of life was decay; if life was because nobody could help its being; if it died because no one could keep it from dying; yet were there two facts fit almost to embalm the body of this living death: Barbara, and the world which was the body of Barbara! So life carried the day, if but the day, and the heart of Richard rejoiced in the midst of perishings. Only, the night was coming in which no man can rejoice. Was he then presuming to be in love with Barbara? I do not care to meet the question. If I knew what the mysterious word, _love_, meant, I might be able to answer it, but what should I thus gain or give? I know he loved her. I know that a divine power of truth and beauty had laid hold upon him, and was working in him as the powers of God alone can work in man, for they are the same by which he lives and moves and has his being, and to life are more than meat and drink, than sun and air.