The Reaping by Rafael Sabatini

The Chevalier de Seyrac had spent the day pleasantly in Angèle's company. It is the pessimist Schopenhauer who assures us that only pain is positive; that pleasure is an entirely negative condition, consequent upon the absence of physical or mental affliction, that well-being is merely the absence of bodily ailments, and that happiness is no more than the freedom from mental distress. Whether there may be exceptions which the pessimist overlooked in his philosophy, Seyrac's case would certainly come well within his rule, for never was there a happiness at once more complete and more negative.

He sat by the window throughout most of the forenoon, utterly idle, physically and mentally. And it was this secure idleness, which must in happier times have fretted him, that was in itself a source of supreme well-being to this man who for days and nights had been hunted and afraid to sleep or rest. The reaction from the horrors that had encompassed him was all his present happiness, and it was complete. He was content to sit there, watching Angèle as she plied her needle. He talked a little, and in between his talks he would hum snatches of long-forgotten songs. The shadow of death in which so long he had moved, chilled and furtive, had been lifted from him.