Then she ran to a slant spile rising lonely from the sand, and sank down quivering. It seemed to her as if she could bear no more joy; her body ached with it. She threw up her hands and laughed aloud in sheer ecstasy.
Then she remembered that she had left her book in the grove, and she stumbled up and walked back slowly, smiling and humming an air as she went along.
The first shade of the dimming afternoon lay under the trees as she climbed again to the little clearing, and the sunbeams glanced obliquely from the crooked oak branches. The air was very still and freighted only with the soft swish of the ebb-tide and the clean fragrance of balsam. Her book lay open and face down on the plank seat. She picked it up and sat down, leaning back.
She was still humming, low-voiced, and as she sat she began to sing—not strongly, but hushed, as though for a drowsy ear—with her face lifted and her dreamy eyes upon the sea margin.
“Purple flower and soaring lark,
Throbbing song and story bold,
All must pass into the dark,
Die and mingle with the mold.
Ah, but still your face I see!
Bend and clasp me; Sweet, kiss me!”