An alluring picture--of a certain deep, clear bathing pool in the park
rose before him. It had not called to him for many a day, and now he saw
its dark blueness gleam between flags and green rushes in its encircling
thickness of shrubs and trees.
He sprang from his bed, and in a few minutes was striding across the
grass of the park, his towels over his arm, his head thrown back as he
drank in the freshness of the morning-scented air. It was scented with
dew and grass and the breath of waking trees and growing things; early
twitters and thrills were to be heard here and there, insisting on
morning joyfulness; rabbits frisked about among the fine-grassed
hummocks of their warren and, as he passed, scuttled back into their
holes, with a whisking of short white tails, at which he laughed with
friendly amusement. Cropping stags lifted their antlered heads, and
fawns with dappled sides and immense lustrous eyes gazed at him without
actual fear, even while they sidled closer to their mothers. A skylark
springing suddenly from the grass a few yards from his feet made him
stop short once and stand looking upward and listening. Who could pass
by a skylark at five o'clock on a summer's morning--the little, heavenly
light-heart circling and wheeling, showering down diamonds, showering
down pearls, from its tiny pulsating, trilling throat?
"Do you know why they sing like that? It is because all but the joy of
things has been kept hidden from them.
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