Senator North by Gertrude Atherton

The ice was on the lake this time, although it was melting rapidly, but the sun shone all day. She had to wear her furs in the woods, but the greens had never looked so vivid and fresh, and save for an occasional woodchopper and her own servants, there was not a soul to be met in that high solitude. The hotel across the lake would not open for a month. Even the birds still lingered in the South.

After she had been alone for two days she wondered why, when in trouble before, she had not turned instinctively to solitude in the forest. It is only the shallow mind that dislikes and fears the lonely places of Nature: the intellect, no matter what vapours may be sent up from the heart, finds not only solace in retirement, but another form of that companionship of the ego which the deeply religious find in retreat. The intellectual may lack the supreme self-satisfaction of the religious, but they find a keen pleasure in being able to make the very most of the results of years of consistent effort.