She held on her way.
At length she saw a far-off gleam of water, and knew she had all but reached her destination.
On she went, and, pushing through the dense mass of witch-hazel bushes that grew along the top of the lake bank, jumped. It seemed a leap to destruction, for Deans' woods bounded the lake here with high, precipitous cliffs; but the path to that spot was marked by her heart-blood, and she had made no error in following it. She had a drop of four feet or so; and then she stood upon a long, narrow, jutting ledge, surrounded by the tops of the trees that grew below it on the bank proper. From the top of the bank it was almost invisible—entirely so, unless the looker penetrated the witch-hazel hedge. From the lake it was plainly seen.
Here, then, she paused, looking forth over the water, and being scorned by the moon—
"For so it is, with past delights
She taunts men's brains and makes them mad."
* * * * * *
She stood upon the rocky point and held out her clasped hands despairingly. Her hair, loosened by many a tugging branch, fell about her in wild disorder—now blown across her flushed cheeks, wild eyes and parted lips; now wrenched back by the high wind, its whole weight streaming behind her; now framing her face in dusky convolutions.
In the mute agony of her gesture, she seemed a fit emblem of despairing grief—the grief of Psyche for Adonis.
The moon broke from the embrace of its clouds and sailed high up into the night, then faded towards the horizon.
And still she stood, outwearing her passion by her patience. About her surged all the weird melodies that loneliness and night and despair smite from the heart-strings. The blood sang in her ears, a monotonous obligato to those piercing notes.