There was a star fell out of the night,
Fell down that tall blue precipice,
And I had time to lift my sight,
To lift my fortunate sight to this
And say—I am not too late,
I am not too late.
Days and nights went by under the trees. The travellers went down into the Yosemite Valley itself. At one hour the subtle shape of Half Dome was suggested through a robe of morning mists, at another it was hewn starkly out of a hard sky. They confronted the incredible grained and golden face of El Capitan, that perfect half of an unknown whole, that perpendicular desert of stone which bares its naked heart to the sun and whose boundaries march with those of the clouds. There was for days a sound of falling waters always. Edward did not hear it, but he could see the thin silken bands of water binding the mountains, and he could lie at the feet of falls in an explosion of light spray and watch the stars shoot out of the smooth high brim of the fall three thousand feet above him.
The red pine ground was their bed between the crimson and golden trunks of trees. There was always light on the river and often, it seemed, a light within the river, a twisting snake of light.
Yosemite was printed like a dream upon that part of the memory that registers impossible things....
They were motoring westward again through the gold country—Eldorado. The two Fords were together now, Tam driving the first. Lucy was in the front seat beside Tam. Emily and Edward sat in the back.