To inhale the fresh night air was to drink deeply of an ethereal beverage.

I had never experienced so delicious a sensation since I had stood on the grassy battlements of the Chateau d'Arques, with the orchards and gardens of sunny Normandy spread like a carpet below my feet.
But this hill was loftier than that on which the feudal castle rears its crumbling towers, and the landscape below me was wilder than verdant Normandy.
No words can tell how I rejoiced in this untrodden region--this severance from the Strand and Temple Bar.

I felt as if my old life was falling away from me--like the scales of the lepers who were cleansed by the Divine Healer.

I felt myself worthier to love, or even to be loved by, the bright true-hearted girl whose image fills my heart.

Ah, if Heaven gave me that dear angel, I think my old life, my old recklessness, my old want of principle, would drop away from me altogether, and the leper would stand forth cleansed and whole.