with what a difference it was said

Her eyes met Amherst's. "It seems to me," he said, "that you're like that yourself--loving long flights, yet happiest in the thick of life." She raised her dark brows laughingly. "So I imagine--but then you see I've never had the long flight!" Amherst smiled. "Ah, there it is--one never knows--one never says, _This is the moment_! because, however good it is, it always seems the door to a better one beyond. Faust never said it till the end, when he'd nothing left of all he began by thinking worth while; and then, with what a difference it was said!" She pondered. "Yes--but it _was_ the best, after all--the moment in which he had nothing left...." "Oh," Cicely broke in suddenly, "do look at the squirrel up there! See, father--he's off! Let's follow him!" As she crouched there, with head thrown back, and sparkling lips and eyes, her fair hair--of her mother's very hue--making a shining haze about her face, Amherst recalled the winter evening at Hopewood, when he and Bessy had tracked the grey squirrel under the snowy beeches. Scarcely three years ago--and how bitter memory had turned! A chilly cloud spread over his spirit, reducing everything once more to the leaden hue of reality.... "It's too late for any more adventures--we must be going," he said. Chapter 20 AMHERST'S morning excursions with his step-daughter and Miss Brent renewed themselves more than once. He welcomed any pretext for escaping from the unprofitable round of his thoughts, and these woodland explorations, with their gay rivalry of search for some rare plant or elusive bird, and the contact with the child's happy wonder, and with the morning brightness of Justine's mood, gave him his only moments of self-forgetfulness. But the first time that Cicely's chatter carried home an echo of their adventures, Amherst saw a cloud on his wife's face. Her resentment of Justine's influence over the child had long since subsided, and in the temporary absence of the governess she was glad to have Cicely amused; but she was never quite satisfied that those about her should have pursuits and diversions in which she did not share.