In the crises of life, when we are overwhelmed by joy or sorrow, we see our surroundings with sharpened senses, and they remain for ever afterwards indelibly part of our experience. Charles scrutinized with strained intentness the box borders of the little garden, the faded autumn leaves floating to the ground, the crumbling walls, the grotesquely twisted branches of the apple trees, picturesque details which were to remain in his memory for ever, eternally bound up with the memory of that supreme hour of early sorrow, by a trick of memory peculiar to deep feeling.