Walden re-entered his house, hardly able to sustain the sudden joy that filled him. He felt himself trembling nervously, and was angry at his own weakness.
"I am more foolish than any love-sick boy!" he said to himself with inward remonstrance--"And God knows I am old enough to know better! But I cannot help being glad she has come home!--I cannot help it! For with her presence it seems to me that 'the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, and the time of the singing of birds is come'! She is so full of life and brightness!-we shall know nothing of dull days or gloomy skies in St. Rest if she stays with us,--though perhaps for me it might be wiser and safer to choose the dull days and gloomy skies rather than tempt my soul with the magical light of an embodied spring in winter-time! But I shall be careful,--careful of myself and of her,- -I shall guard her name in every way, on my side--and if--if I love her, she shall never know it!"
He resumed his former seat by the study fire, and again took up his volume of Tennyson. And opening the book at hazard, his glance fell on that exquisite 'Fragment' which perhaps excels in its own way all the 'Idylls of the King'-"As she fled fast thro' sun and shade, The happy winds upon her play'd, Blowing the ringlet from the braid: She look'd so lovely as she sway'd The rein with dainty finger-tips. A man had given all other bliss, And all his worldly worth for this, To waste his whole heart in one kiss Upon her perfect lips."
"Quite true!" he said, as he read the lines half aloud, a tender smile lighting up the gravity of his deep thoughtful eyes--"True to the life, so far as the Guinevere of to-day is concerned! But let the simile stop there, John, my boy! Don't carry it any further! Don't deceive yourself as to your own demerits! You are nothing but an old-fashioned country parson--a regular humdrum, middle-aged fogey!--that's what you are!--so, even though you HAVE fallen in love (which at your time of life is a folly you ought to be ashamed of), don't for Heaven's sake imagine yourself a Lancelot, John!--it won't do!"