se. No sort of subterfuge is within her
means--neither the gay deception nor the grave. What she knows that he
resents, she still must do immutably--bound upon the wheel of her true
self. For only one "self" she has, and that the wrong one.

She turns back, she walks homeward along the beach--"on the edge of the
low rocks by the sea, for miles."

V.--ON THE CLIFF

But still love is a power! Love can move mountains, for is not love the
same as faith? And not a mountain is here, but a mere man's
heart--already "moved," for he _has_ loved her.

It is summer again. She sits on the cliff, leaning back on the short dry
grass--if one still can call it grass, so "deep was done the work of the
summer sun." And there near by is the rock, baked dry as the grass, and
flat as an anvil's face. "No iron like that!" Not a weed nor a shell:
"death's altar by the lone shore." The drear analogies succeed one
another; she sees them everywhere, in everything. The dead grass, the
dead rock. . . . But now, what is this on the turf? A gay blue cricket!
A cricket--only that? Nay, a war-horse, a magic little steed, a "real
fairy, with wings all right." And there too on the rock, like a drop of
fire, that gorgeous-coloured butterfly.

"No turf, no rock: in their ugly stead,
See, wonderful blue and red!"

Shall there not then be other analogies? May not the minds of men,
though burnt and bare as the turf and the rock, be changed like them,
transfigured like them:

"With such a blue-and-red grace, not theirs--
Love settling unawares!"

It was almost a miracle, was it not? the way they changed. Such miracles
happen every day.

VI.--READING A BOOK, UNDER THE CLIFF

These clever young men! She is reading a poem of the wind.[262:1] The
singer asks what the wind wants of him--so instant does it seem in its
appeal.

"'Art thou a dumb wronged thing that would be righted,
Entrusting thus thy cause to me? Forbear!
No tongue can mend such pleadings; faith requited
With falsehood--love, at last aware
Of scorn--hopes, early blighted--

'We have them; but I know not any tone
So fit as thine to falter forth a sorrow;
Dost think men would go mad without a moan,
If they knew any way to borrow
A pathos like thine own?'"

The splendid lines assail her.[263:1] In her anguish of response she
turns from them at last--they are too much. This power of perception is
almo