It was a melancholy awakening, and we were silent and depressed at breakfast; for the first time no birds sang, and no sunlight flickered through the leaves and brought the day smiling to our very door.

The rain fell steadily, and when the wind swept through the trees a sound like a sob went up from the Forest.
After breakfast, for lack of active occupation, we lighted a few sticks in the rough fireplace, and found ourselves gradually drawn into the circle of cheer in the little room.

The great world of Nature was for a moment out of doors, and there seemed no incongruity talking about our own experiences; we recalled the days in the world we had left behind; we remembered the faces of our neighbours; we reminded each other of the incidents of our journey; we retold, in antiphonal fashion, the story of our stay in the Forest; we grew eloquent as we described, one after another, the noble persons we had met there; our hearts kindled as we became conscious of the wonderful enrichment and enlargement of life that had come to us; and as the varied splendours of the days and scenes of Arden returned in our memories, the spell of the Forest came upon us, and the mysterious cadence of the rain, falling from leaf to leaf, added another and deeper tone to the harmony of our Forest life.

The gloom had gone; we had all the delight of a new experience in our hearts.
"I am glad it rains," Rosalind said, as she gave the fire one of her vigorous stirrings; "I am glad it rains: I don't think we should have realised how lovely it is here if we were not shut in from time to time.

One is played upon by so many impressions that one must escape from them to understand how beautiful they are.