She was afraid of him, it is true; but in how different a way from that in which she was afraid of his mother! His absence did not make her feel free, and to escape from his mother was sometimes the whole desire of her day.
She was trying hard, not altogether successfully, to fix her attention on her task, when a yellow leaf dropped on the very line she was poring over.

Thinking how soon the trees would be bare once more, she brushed the leaf away, and resumed her lesson.
"To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light," she had just read once more, when down fell a second tree-leaf on the book-leaf.

Again she brushed it away, and read to the end of the sonnet: "Hast gained thy entrance, virgin wise and pure." What Letty's thoughts about the sonnet were, I can not tell: how fix thought indefinite in words defined?
But her angel might well have thought what a weary road she had to walk before she gained that entrance.

But for all of us the road _has_ to be walked, every step, and the uttermost farthing paid.

The gate will open wide to welcome us, but it will not come to meet us.