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those mirrors, the minds of men, in those pools of uneasy water,
in which clouds for ever turn and shadows form, dreams persisted,
and it was impossible to resist the strange intimation which every
gull, flower, tree and the white earth itself seemed to declare
(but if questioned at once to withdraw) that good triumphs, happi-
ness prevails, order rules, or to resist the extraordinary stimulus
to range hither and thither in search of some absolute good, some
crystal of intensity, remote from the known pleasures and familiar
virtues, something alien to the processes of domestic life, single,
hard, bright, like a diamond in the sand, which would render the
possessor secure. Moreover, softened and acquiescent, the spring
with her bees humming and gnats dancing threw her lcloak about her,
and veiled her eyes and averted her head, and among passing
shadows and flights of small rain seemed to have taken upon her a
knowledge of the sorrows of mankind.
      In this warmth, the wind sent its spies about the house again.
Flies wove a web in the sunny rooms; weeds that had grown close
to the glass in the night tapped methodically at the window pane.
When darkness fell, the stroke of the lighthouse which had laid
itself when nights were dark with authority upon the carpet,
tracing its pattern, came now mixed with moonlight gliding gently
and stealthily as if it laid its caress and lingered and looked
and came lovingly again. But in the very lull of this loving
caress, as the long stroke leant upon the bed, the rock was rent
asunder; another fold of the shawl loosened; there it hung, and

 


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