Mrs. Beresford is here, or at least she is in Great Belvern, a few miles distant. I am not painting, these latter days. I have turned the artist side of my nature to the wall just for a bit, and the woman side is having full play. I do not know what the world will think about it, if it stops to think at all, but I feel as if I were 'right side out' for the first time in my life; and when I take up my brushes again, I shall have a new world within from which to paint,--yes, and a new world without.
Good-bye, dear Belvern! Autumn and winter may come into my life, but whenever I think of you it will be summer-time in my heart. I shall hear the tinkle of the belled sheep on the hillsides; inhale the fragrance of the flowering vine that climbed in at my cottage window; relive in memory the days when Love and I first walked together, hand in hand. Dear days of happy idleness; of dreaming dreams and seeing visions; of morning walks over the hills; of 'bread-and-cheese and kisses' at noon, with kind Mrs. Bobby hovering like a plump guardian angel over the simple feast; afternoon tea under the friendly shades of the yew-tree, and parting at the wicket-gate. I can see him pass the clock-tower, the little greengrocer shop, the old stocks, the green pump; then he is at the turn of the road where the stone wall and the hawthorn hedge will presently hide him from my view. I fly up to my window, push back the vines, catch his last wave of the hand. I would call him back, if I dared; but it would be no easier to let him go the second time, and there is always to-morrow. Thank God for to-morrow! And if there should be no to-morrow? Then thank God for to-day! And so good-bye again, dear Belvern! It was in the lap of your lovely hills that Penelope first knew das irdische Gluck; that she first loved, first lived; forgot how to be artist, in remembering how to be woman.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Penelope's English Experiences, by Kate Douglas Wiggin