The wild force which every year visits the world, driving with its
soft violence snowy clouds and their dark shadows, breaking through all
crusts and sheaths, covering the earth in a fierce embrace; the wild
force which turns form to form, and with its million leapings, swift
as the flight of swallows and the arrow-darts of the rain, hurries
everything on to sweet mingling--this great, wild force of universal
life, so-called the Spring, had come to Mr. Stone, like new wine to some
old bottle. And Hilary, to whom it had come, too, watching him every
morning setting forth with a rough towel across his arm, wondered
whether the old man would not this time leave his spirit swimming in the
chill waters of the Serpentine--so near that spirit seemed to breaking
through its fragile shell.

Four days had gone by since the interview at which he had sent away the
little model, and life in his household--that quiet backwater choked
with lilies--seemed to have resumed the tranquillity enjoyed before this
intrusion of rude life. The paper whiteness of Mr. Stone was the only
patent evidence that anything disturbing had occurred--that and certain
feelings about which the strictest silence was preserved.

On the morning of the fifth day, seeing the old man stumble on the
level flagstones of the garden, Hilary finished dressing hastily, and
followed. He overtook him walking forward feebly beneath the candelabra
of flowering chestnut-trees, with a hail-shower striking white on his
high shoulders; and, placing himself alongside, without greeting--for
forms were all one to Mr. Stone--he said:

"Surely you don't mean to bathe during a hail storm, sir! Make an
exception this once. You're not looking quite yourself."