Lively as any newborn butterfly, not like a
butterfly's, flitting and hovering, was her flight, for still, like
one that longed, she sped and strained and flew. The joy of bare
life swelled in Florimel's bosom. She looked up, she looked around,
she breathed deep. The cloudy anger that had rushed upon her like a
watching tiger the moment she waked, fell back, and left her soul
a clear minor to reflect God's dream of a world. She turned, and
saw Malcolm at the tiller, and the cloudy wrath sprang upon her.
He stood composed and clear and cool as the morning, without sign
of doubt or conscience of wrong, now peeping into the binnacle,
now glancing at the sunny sails, where swayed across and back the
dark shadows of the rigging, as the cutter leaned and rose, like
a child running and staggering over the multitudinous and unstable
hillocks. She turned from him.
"Good morning, my lady! What a good morning it is!" As in all his
address to his mistress, the freedom of the words did not infect the
tone; that was resonant of essential honour. "Strange to think,"
he went on, "that the sun himself there is only a great fire,
and knows nothing about it! There must be a sun to that sun, or
the whole thing is a vain show. There must be one to whom each is
itself, yet the all makes a whole--one who is at once both centre
and circumference to all.
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