"And this morning, coming down from Barrule, everything seemed to speak to me of one thing, and that was the dearest thing in all the world. 'Dear little river,' I said, 'how happily you sing your way to the sea.' And then I remembered that before it got there it would turn the wheel for us at Port-y-Vullin some day, and so I said 'Dear little mill, how merrily you'll go when I listen to your plash and plunge, with her I love beside me."
She did not speak, and after a moment he laughed.
"That's very foolish, isn't it?" he said.
"Oh, no," she said. "Why foolish?"
"Well it sounds so; but, ah, last night the stars around me on the mountain top seemed like a sanctuary, and this morning the birds among the gorse were like a choir, and all sang together, and away to the roof their word rang out—Greeba! Greeba! Greeba!"
He could hear a faint sobbing.
"Greeba!"
"Yes?"
"You are crying."
"Am I? Oh, no! No, Jason, not that."