Yet
he knew it was as it had always been. The difference was in himself.
The sympathetic response to that wild beauty was purely subjective. He
could look at the far snows, the bluish gleam of the glaciers, the
restful green of the valley floor, with a new quality of appreciation.
He could even--so resilient and adaptable a thing is the human
mind--see himself engaged upon material enterprises, years passing,
his boy growing up, life assuming a fullness, a proportion, an orderly
progression that two hours earlier would have seemed to him only a
futile dream.
He wondered if this would endure. He looked down at his wife leaning
upon his knee, her face thoughtful and content. He looked out over the
valley once more, at those high, sentinel peaks thrusting up their
white cones, one behind the other. He heard the river. He saw the
foxglove swaying in the wind, the red flare of the poppies at his
door. He smelled the fragrance of wild honeysuckle, the sharp, sweet
smells blown out of the forest that drowsed in the summer heat.
It was all good.
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