It was one of those days which release all the secret inexpressible dreams of the heart.

Every face that she passed was touched with the wistful longing which is the very essence of spring.

She saw it in the faces of the women who hurried, warm, flushed, and impatient, from the shops or the markets; she saw it in the faces of the men returning from work and thinking of freedom; and she saw it again in the long sad faces of the dray-horses standing hitched to a city cart at the corner.
In the Square the sunlight lay in splinters over the young grass, which was dotted with buttercups, and overhead the long black boughs of the trees were sprinkled with pale green leaves.

Back and forth from the grassy slopes to the winding brick walks, squirrels darted, busy and joyous; and a few old men, never absent from the benches, were smiling vaguely at the passers-by.
When she reached the gate of the Governor's house, her wish to see Patty had vanished, and she decided that she would go on to the library and ask for a book that she had recently heard John Benham discussing.

How much of her life now, in spite of its active impersonal interests, was beginning to centre in John Benham! They were planning to be married in June, and beyond that month of roses, which was once so saturated with memories of her early romance, she saw ahead of her long years of tranquil happiness.