I had won the race for which I had
entered myself so rashly, and we were to be married in June.
Whether the change was due to the orders I had left with the
gardener and the rest of the servants, or to my own state of mind,
I cannot tell. At all events, the old place did not look the same
to me when I opened my window on the morning after my arrival.
There were the gray walls below me and the gray turrets flanking
the huge building; there were the fountains, the marble causeways,
the smooth basins, the tall box hedges, the water lilies and the
swans, just as of old. But there was something else there, too--
something in the air, in the water, and in the greenness that I did
not recognize--a light over everything by which everything was
transfigured. The clock in the tower struck seven, and the strokes
of the ancient bell sounded like a wedding chime. The air sang
with the thrilling treble of the song-birds, with the silvery music
of the plashing water and the softer harmony of the leaves stirred
by the fresh morning wind. There was a smell of new-mown hay from
the distant meadows, and of blooming roses from the beds below,
wafted up together to my window.
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