the summer midnight
Thus it was with a sense of well-being that she stepped on rich carpets , let her eyes wander over the light and dark of rooms where wealth had done the bidding of taste , watched the neat and silent ministering of servants . These things to her meant priceless opportunity , the facilitating of self-culture . Even the little room in which she sat by herself of evenings was daintily furnished ; when weary with reading , it eased and delighted her merely to gaze at the soft colours of the wall-paper , the vases with their growing flowers , the well-chosen pictures , the graceful shape of a chair ; she nursed her appreciation of these Joys , resisted the ingress of familiarity , sought daily for novel aspects of things become intimately known . She rose at early hours that she might have the garden to herself in all its freshness ; she loved to look from her window into the calm depth of the summer midnight . In this way she brought into consciousness the craving of her soul , made the pursuit of beauty a religion , grew to welcome the perception of new meaning in beautiful things with a spiritual delight . This was the secret of her life , which she guarded so jealously , which she feared even by chance to betray in the phrasings of common intercourse . Wilfrid had divined it , and it was the secret influence of this sympathy that had led her to such unwonted frankness in their latest conversation .