Jennifer, looking childish and despondent, sat down silently by the window with a book.
Judith wrote on a sheet of paper:
Tall oaks branch-charmèd by the earnest stars; and studied it. That was a starry night: the sound of the syllables made stars prick out in dark treetops.
Under it she wrote:
... the foam
Of perilous seas in faëry lands forlorn.
What a lot there were for the sea and the seashore!... The page became fuller.
Upon the desolate verge of light
Yearned loud the iron-bosomed sea.
The unplumbed salt estranging sea.
From the lone sheiling of the misty island
Mountains divide us and a world of seas:
But still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland;
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.
Ah, that said it all....
The lines came flocking at random.
But the majestic river floated on,
Out of the mist and hum of that low land
Into the frosty starlight, and there flowed
Rejoicing through the hushed Chorasmian waste
Under the solitary moon....