With this comparative bliss came a faintness and a trembling that presently made her slip down upon the warm and sunny floor, and lie there, with her face within her arm and the tears upon her cheeks.

The odor of the box wrapped her like a mantle; a lizard glided past her; somewhere in open spaces birds were singing; finally a greyhound came down the path, and put its nose into the hollow of her hand.
She rose to her knees, and curled her arm around the dog's neck; then, with a long sigh, stood up, and asked of herself if this were the way to the house.

She had never seen the house at close range, had never been in this walled garden.

It was from Williamsburgh that the minister had taken her to his home, eleven years before.

Sometimes from the river, in those years, she had seen, rising above the trees, the steep roof and the upper windows; sometimes upon the creek she had gone past the garden wall, and had smelled the flowers upon the other side.
In her lonely life, with the beauty of the earth about her to teach her that there might be greater beauty that she yet might see with a daily round of toil and sharp words to push her to that escape which lay in a world of dreams, she had entered that world, and thrived therein.