The winter
bareness spread drearily over it now. The flowers that she had
taught me to distinguish by their names, the flowers that I had
taught her to paint from, were gone, and the tiny white paths that
led between the beds were damp and green already. I went on to
the avenue of trees, where we had breathed together the warm
fragrance of August evenings, where we had admired together the
myriad combinations of shade and sunlight that dappled the ground
at our feet. The leaves fell about me from the groaning branches,
and the earthy decay in the atmosphere chilled me to the bones. A
little farther on, and I was out of the grounds, and following the
lane that wound gently upward to the nearest hills. The old
felled tree by the wayside, on which we had sat to rest, was
sodden with rain, and the tuft of ferns and grasses which I had
drawn for her, nestling under the rough stone wall in front of us,
had turned to a pool of water, stagnating round an island of
draggled weeds. I gained the summit of the hill, and looked at
the view which we had so often admired in the happier time. It
was cold and barren--it was no longer the view that I remembered.
The sunshine of her presence was far from me-the charm of her
voice no longer murmured in my ear.
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