DISILLUSION "Letters are unsatisfactory things at the best of times, and what we all want is to have you with us again for a little while.

I am sure you must have had a surfeit of the simple life by this time, so come to us and be luxurious and exotic in London for a change.

Don't disappoint us, Sara! "Yours ever affectionately, "ELISABETH." Sara, seated at the open window of her room, re-read the last paragraph of the letter which the morning's post had brought her, and then let it fall again on to her lap, whilst she stared with sombre eyes across the bay to where the Monk's Cliff reared itself, stark and menacing, against the sky.
April had slipped into May, and the blue waters of the Channel flickered with a myriad dancing points of light reflected from an unclouded sun.
The trees had clothed themselves anew in pale young green, and the whole atmosphere was redolent of spring--spring as she reaches her maturity before she steps aside to let the summer in.
Sara frowned a little.

She was out of tune with the harmony of things.
You need happiness in your heart to be at one with the eager pulsing of new life, the reaching out towards fulfillment that is the essential quality of spring.

Whereas Sara's heart was empty of happiness and hopes, and of all the joyous beginnings that are the glorious appanage of youth.