Sanctuary

MP3 Audio CD. Sanctuary

PART I


It is not often that youth allows itself to feel undividedly happy: the
sensation is too much the result of selection and elimination to be within
reach of the awakening clutch on life. But Kate Orme, for once, had yielded
herself to happiness; letting it permeate every faculty as a spring rain
soaks into a germinating meadow. There was nothing to account for this
sudden sense of beatitude; but was it not this precisely which made it
so irresistible, so overwhelming? There had been, within the last two
months--since her engagement to Denis Peyton--no distinct addition to
the sum of her happiness, and no possibility, she would have affirmed,
of adding perceptibly to a total already incalculable. Inwardly and
outwardly the conditions of her life were unchanged; but whereas, before,
the air had been full of flitting wings, now they seemed to pause over
her and she could trust herself to their shelter.

Many influences had combined to build up the centre of brooding peace in
which she found herself. Her nature answered to the finest vibrations,
and at first her joy in loving had been too great not to bring with it a
certain confusion, a readjusting of the whole scenery of life. She found
herself in a new country, wherein he who had led her there was least able
to be her guide. There were moments when she felt that the first stranger
in the street could have interpreted her happiness for her more easily
than Denis. Then, as her eye adapted itself, as the lines flowed into each
other, opening deep vistas upon new horizons, she began to enter into
possession of her kingdom, to entertain the actual sense of its belonging
to her. But she had never before felt that she also belonged to it; and
this was the feeling which now came to complete her happiness, to give it