She did not see anything that was around her.
She felt a great dulness that closed in on her, a great weight that was
like iron on her head.
She thought she was in the strange, noisy, cruel city, with' the river
close to her, and all her dead dreams drifting down it like murdered
children, whilst that woman kissed him.
She slipped her feet on to the floor, and rose and stood upright. There
was a door open to the moonlight--the door where she had sat spinning and
singing in a thousand happy days; the lavender blew; the tall, unbudded
green lilies swayed in the wind; she looked at them, and knew none of
them.
The night air drifted through her linen dress, and played on her bare
arms, and lifted the curls of her hair; the same air that had played
with her so many times out of mind when she had been a little tottering
thing that measured its height by the red rosebush. But it brought her no
sense of where she was.
All she saw was the woman who kissed him.
There was the water beyond; the kindly calm water, all green with the
moss and the nests of the ouzels and the boughs of the hazels and
willows, where the swans were asleep in the reeds, and the broad lilies
spread wide and cool.
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