Sanctuary

It is not often that youth allows itself to feel undividedly happy: the sensation is too much theresult of selection and elimination to be within reach of the awakening clutch on life. But KateOrme, for once, had yielded herself to happiness; letting it permeate every faculty as a spring rainsoaks into a germinating meadow. There was nothing to account for this sudden sense of beatitude;but was it not this precisely which made it so irresistible, so overwhelming? There had been,...
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It is not often that youth allows itself to feel undividedly happy: the sensation is too much theresult of selection and elimination to be within reach of the awakening clutch on life. But KateOrme, for once, had yielded herself to happiness; letting it permeate every faculty as a spring rainsoaks into a germinating meadow. There was nothing to account for this sudden sense of beatitude;but was it not this precisely which made it so irresistible, so overwhelming? There had been, withinthe last two months--since her engagement to Denis Peyton--no distinct addition to the sum ofher happiness, and no possibility, she would have affirmed, of adding perceptibly to a total alreadyincalculable. Inwardly and outwardly the conditions of her life were unchanged; but whereas, before,the air had been full of flitting wings, now they seemed to pause over her and she could trust herselfto their shelter.Many influences had combined to build up the centre of brooding peace in which she foundherself. Her nature answered to the finest vibrations, and at first her joy in loving had been too greatnot to bring with it a certain confusion, a readjusting of the whole scenery of life. She found herselfin a new country, wherein he who had led her there was least able to be her guide. There weremoments when she felt that the first stranger in the street could have interpreted her happiness forher more easily than Denis. Then, as her eye adapted itself, as the lines flowed into each other,opening deep vistas upon new horizons, she began to enter into possession of her kingdom, toentertain the actual sense of its belonging to her. But she had never before felt that she alsobelonged to it; and this was the feeling which now came to complete her happiness, to give it thehallowing sense of permanence.She rose from the writing-table where, list in hand, she had been going over the weddinginvitations, and walked toward the drawing-room window. Everything about her seemed tocontribute to that rare harmony of feeling which levied a tax on every sense. The large coolness ofthe room, its fine traditional air of spacious living, its outlook over field and woodland toward thelake lying under the silver bloom of September; the very scent of the late violets in a glass on thewriting-table; the rosy-mauve masses of hydrangea in tubs along the terrace; the fall, now and then,of a leaf through the still air--all, somehow, were mingled in the suffusion of well-being that yetmade them seem but so much dross upon its current.