"A man set his Wish all odds before,
With sword, with pen, and with gold he stirred
Till the Wish and he met on a conquered shore,
And frae one to the other gaed an ebon bird,
An ebon bird.
"God looked on a man and said: ''Tis time!
The broken mends, clear flows the blurred.
You and I are two worlds that rhyme!'
And frae one to the other gaed a golden bird,
A golden bird."
She sang it through, then sat entirely still against the stem of the
thorn, while about her lips played that faint, unapproachable,
glamouring smile. Her hands touched the grass to either side her body;
her slender, blue-clad figure, the all of her, smote him like some
god's line of poetry.
There was in the laird of Glenfernie's nature an empty palace. It had
been built through ages and every wind of pleasure and pain had blown
about it. Then it had slowly come about that the winds of pain had
increased upon the winds of pleasure. The mind closed the door of the
palace and the nature inclined to turn from it. It was there, but a
sea mist hid it, and a tall thorn-hedge, and a web stretched across
its idle gates. It had hardly come, in this life, into Glenfernie's
waking mind that it was there at all.
Now with a suddenness every door clanged open. The mist parted, the
thorn-wood sank, the web was torn.
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