er point of view had been changing; a
group of white foxgloves, like ghost-flames, that she had seen in a
coppice, the creeping of a bright eyed shrew mouse through last year's
leaves at her feet, the hundreds of little rabbits with curved-in backs
that ran with their curious rocking action over the dewy fields at
evening--all these things gave her a shock of pleasure so keen it
surprised her. Till now she had not admitted her own artificiality even
to herself; now that she was regaining directness she told herself she
could afford to be more candid.

Nearly every day she and Ishmael, with Vassie and sometimes Killigrew or
Judy, or even the Parson, would go on long expeditions to the cromlechs
and carns of the country around; but sometimes she and Ishmael would
slip away together, defying convention, sometimes on foot, sometimes in
a light market-gig--casual wanderings with no fixed goal, and
inexpressibly delightful to both. On sunny days they put up the pony at
some farm, and lay upon the short, warm grass of a cliff-face watching
the foam patterns form and dissolve again beneath a diamond scatter of
spray. When the sea-mist rolled up steadily over Cloom like blown smoke,
here opaque, there gossamer-thin, they would sally forth and tramp the
spongy moors, the ground sobbing beneath their feet and the mournful
calling of the gulls sounding in their heedless ears. And all the while
her turns of head and throat, the inflections of her low, rich voice,
were being registered on a mind free till now of all such impressions
and tenacious as a child's. Small wonder that as the days drifted past
Ishmael felt that he, too, was drifting on a tide of golden waters to
some shore of promise in a golden dawn.

Blanche, too, was slipping into something like love these days; the
beauty of their surroundings and something simple and primitive in the
boy himself both made the same appeal to her. Was it possible that after
all her flirtations, all her insincerities, she should capture the
birthright of the single-hearted? It seemed so, for Blanche had this
much of grace left--she was responsive to simplicity. There was
something more than the instinct of the coquette in the fullness with
which she gave him all he asked, step by step; she had thrown away
calculation and was letting herself be guided by her own instinct and
the finer instinct she felt to be in him. Each demand his moods made on
her she met, each thing his reverent hand un