I

It is not often that youth allows itself to feel undividedly happy: the sensation is too much the result of selection and elimination¹ to be within reach of the awakening² clutch on life. But Kate Orme, for once, had yielded herself to happiness; letting it permeate³ every faculty⁴ as a spring rain soaks into a germinating⁵ meadow. There was nothing to account for this sudden sense of beatitude; but was it not this precisely⁶ which made it so irresistible⁷, so overwhelming? There had been, within the last two months — since her engagement to Denis Peyton — no distinct addition to the sum of her happiness, and no possibility, she would have affirmed, of adding perceptibly to a total already incalculable. Inwardly and outwardly the conditions of her life were unchanged; but whereas, before, the air had been full of flitting wings, now they seemed to pause over her and she could trust herself to their shelter.

Many influences had combined to build up the centre of brooding peace in which she found herself. Her nature answered to the finest vibrations⁸, and at first her joy in loving had been too great not to bring with it a certain confusion, a readjusting of the whole scenery of life. She found herself in a new country, wherein he who had led her there was least able to be her guide. There were moments when she felt that the first stranger in the street could have interpreted her happiness for her more easily than Denis. Then, as her eye adapted itself, as the lines flowed into each other, opening deep vistas⁹ upon new horizons, she began to enter into possession of her kingdom, to entertain the actual sense of its belonging to her. But she had never before felt that she also belonged to it; and this was the feeling which now came to complete her happiness, to give it the hallowing sense of permanence.

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