The Builders by Ellen Glasgow

No one met her at the little country station, and leaving her bag for old Jonas, she started out alone to walk the two miles to The Cedars. Straight ahead the long, empty road trailed beneath the fresh young foliage of the woods, the little curled red velvet leaves of the oaks shining through the sea-green mist of the hickories and beeches; and she felt that within her soul there was only a continuation of this long, straight emptiness that led on to nothing. Overhead flocks of small fleecy clouds, as white as swans-down, drifted across the changeable April sky, while the breeze, passing through the thick woods, stirred the delicate flower-like shadows on the moist ground. "Spring is so sad," she thought. "I never understood before how much sadder spring is than autumn. " This sadness of budding things, of renewing life, of fugitive scents and ephemeral colours, had become poignantly real.

"It makes me want something different -- something I have never had; and that is the sharpest desire on earth -- the desire for a happiness that hasn't a name."