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TIME PASSESdreams persisted, and it was impossible to resist thestrange intimation which every gull, flower, tree,man and woman, and the white earth itself seemedto declare (but if questioned at once to withdraw)that good triumphs, happiness prevails, orderrules; or to resist the extraordinary stimulus torange hither and thither in search of some absolutegood, some crystal of intensity, remote from theknown pleasures and familiar virtues, somethingalien to the processes of domestic life, single, hard,bright, like a diamond in the sand, which wouldrender the possessor secure. Moreover, softenedand acquiescent, the spring with her bees hum-ming and gnats dancing threw her cloak abouther, veiled her eyes, averted her head, and amongpassing shadows and flights of small rain seemedto have taken upon her a knowledge of the sorrowsof mankind.

[Prue Ramsay died that summer in some illnessconnected with childbirth, which was indeed atragedy, people said. They said nobody deservedhappiness more.]

And now in the heat of summer the wind sentits spies about the house again. Flies wove a webin the sunny rooms; weeds that had grown closeto the glass in the night tapped methodically atthe window pane. When darkness fell, the strokeof the Lighthouse, which had laid itself with such2O5