There he found the loveliness of a dream.

He spent his days upon the crystal blueness of the lake or he walked back into the soft thick verdure of the hills and tramped until he was tired so that he might sleep.

But by this time he had begun to sleep better, he knew, and his dreams had ceased to be a terror to him.
"Perhaps," he thought, "my body is growing stronger." It was growing stronger but--because of the rare peaceful hours when his thoughts were changed--his soul was slowly growing stronger, too.
He began to think of Misselthwaite and wonder if he should not go home.
Now and then he wondered vaguely about his boy and asked himself what he should feel when he went and stood by the carved four-posted bed again and looked down at the sharply chiseled ivory-white face while it slept and, the black lashes rimmed so startlingly the close-shut eyes.
He shrank from it.
One marvel of a day he had walked so far that when he returned the moon was high and full and all the world was purple shadow and silver.

The stillness of lake and shore and wood was so wonderful that he did not go into the villa he lived in.

He walked down to a little bowered terrace at the water's edge and sat upon a seat and breathed in all the heavenly scents of the night.