But if one is standing, it
becomes natural to one, during even a small pause, to take a turn up
and down the room, or even, as I often used to do, in the garden. And
such change and movement I consider eminently salutary both for mind
and body.
I had specially contrived a little window immediately above the desk
at which I stood, fixed to the wall. The room looking on the "loggia,"
which was the scene of the little poem transcribed in the preceding
chapter, was abundantly lighted, but I liked some extra light close to
my desk.
In that room my Bice was born. For it was subsequently to her birth
that the destination of it was changed from a bedroom to a study.
Few men have passed years of more unchequered happiness than I did in
that house. And I was very fond of it.
But, as may be readily imagined, it became all the more odious and
intolerable to me when the "angel in the house" had been taken from
me.
CHAPTER XX.
CONCLUSION.
Assuredly it seemed to me that all was over; and the future a dead
blank. And for a time I was as a man stunned.
But in truth it was very far otherwise! I was fifty-five; but I was in
good health, young for my years, strong and vigorous in constitution,
and before a year had passed it began to seem to me that a future,
and life and its prospects, might open to me afresh; that the curtain
might be dropped on the drama that was passed, and a new phase of life
begun.
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