Still there was on that Home Rule night, a
pallor that had the deadlier hue of sleeplessness, worry,
over-anxiety--the hideous burden of a great, weighty, and complex speech
to deliver.
On April 6th all this was gone. The fresh, youthful, cheerful man who
stood up in his place had drunk deep of the breezes that sweep The
Front at Brighton; his cheeks were burned by the blaze of a splendid
spring sun; in the budding, blossoming vital air around him he had taken
some of that eternal hopefulness with which the new birth of nature in
the spring inspires every human being with any freshness of sensation
left. Perchance from his windows in the Lion Mansion he had looked in
the evening over the broad expanse of frontierless waters, and risen to
the exaltation of the chainless unrest, the tireless and eternal youth,
the illimitable breadth of the sea. At all events, he stood before the
House visibly younger, brighter, serener than for many a day.
The voice bore traces of the transformation of body and soul which this
short visit to the sea has produced. It was soft, mellow, strong. There
were none of the descents to pathetic and inaudible whispers which
occasionally in the hours of fag and fatigue have painfully impressed
the sympathetic hearer.
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