Sometimes the ground
broke away on her left--abruptly--in great chasms, torn from the
hill-side, stripped of trees, and open to the stars. Down rushed the
steep slopes to the plain, clad in the decaying leaf and mast of former
years, and at the edges of these precipitous glades, or scattered at
long intervals across them, great single trees emerged, the types and
masters of the forest, their trunks, incomparably tall, and all their
noble limbs, now thinly veiled by a departing leafage, drawn sharp, in
black and silver, on the pale background of the chalk plain. Nothing so
grandiose as these climbing beech woods of middle England!--by day, as
it were, some vast procession marching joyously over hill and dale to
the music of the birds and the wind; and at night, a brooding host,
silent yet animate, waiting the signal of the dawn.
Diana passed through them, drinking in the exaltation of their silence
and their strength, yet driven on by the mere weakness and foolishness
of love. By following the curve of the down she could reach a point on
the hill-side whence, on a rising ground to the north, Tallyn was
visible. She hastened thither through the night.
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