The right ground for elation was difficulty mastered, and his difficulty--thanks to his modesty--had been to believe in his facility.

THIS was the problem he had worked out to its solution--the solution that was now doing more than all else to make his feet settle and his days flush; and when he wished to feel "good," as they said at American City, he had but to retrace his immense development.

That was what the whole thing came back to--that the development had not been somebody's else passing falsely, accepted too ignobly, for his.

To think how servile he might have been was absolutely to respect himself, was in fact, as much as he liked, to admire himself, as free.

The very finest spring that ever responded to his touch was always there to press--the memory of his freedom as dawning upon him, like a sunrise all pink and silver, during a winter divided between Florence, Rome and Naples some three years after his wife's death.