Page:Through a Glass Lightly (1897, Greg).djvu/85



there be no mistake: we were wholly cognisant that Springrevivifying Springwas in the air. Nature was in the ascendant; and for Artwhy, let her go hang! The world at such a moment as this bade us rejoice, and would not recognise the cloud upon our own brow. And yet the essence of storm and stress was there, irrepressible and irresistible; for though fogs were gone and east winds barely here, we knew that with Candlemas came the great annual sacrifice, the great refusal, to wit, the closing down until November next of the great bin of peerless Madeirabottled, oh! ever so many years before the