And so was he.
Hope swelled wistfully within him like song in the throat of the bluebird and sap in the trees.

With the sun warm upon his face and the gladness of spring in his veins, he sang with Pippa that "God's in his Heaven, all's right with the world!" Well, New York, thank God, lay to the back of him, veiling her realities and truth in glitter, defying nearness.

Every human thing that made for life lay there as surely as it lay here in God's quieter world, but you never came close to it.
So he tramped away to green fields and hills and winding quiet roads, spring riding into his heart, invincible and bold.
An arbutus filled him with the wonder of things, a sense of eternity, a swift, inexplicable compassion, a longing for service to the needs of men.

His ears thrilled to the song of the earth and the whistle of the ploughman turning up the fresh brown earth.

He filled his lungs with the wind of the open country, drank in the enchantment of the morning and the dusk, his nostrils joyously alive to the smell of the furrowed ground and a hint of burgeoning wild flowers.
But the first robin brought misgivings and remorse.