BOOK II

THE COURTS OF THE MORNING I Just about the hour of sunrise a girl sat perched on a rock from which the ground fell westward into an abyss of blue vapour. East of her, after a mile of park-like land, the steep woods rose black as coal, and above them soared into the central heavens a great mountain of rock and shale, which, so sheer was the face, showed even to a viewpoint so near its summit cone of snow. The face and the plateau were still dipped in shadow, but beyond the mountain the sun was up, and its first beam…