I went and stood by the black boulder where I had received the little
child's prompt reply. There was not a grain left, I knew, of that
same sand which had been hallowed by the little feet of Winifred, but
it served my mood just as well as though every grain had felt the
beloved pressure. For that the very sands had loved the child, I half
believed.
I said to myself, as I sat down upon the boulder, 'At this very
moment she is here, she is in Raxton. In a certain little cottage
there is a certain little room.' And then I longed to leave the
sands, to go and stand in front of Wynne's cottage and dream there.
But that would be too foolish. 'I must get home,' I thought. 'The
night will pass somehow, and in the morning I shall, as sure as fate,
see her flitting about the sands she loves, and then what I have
sworn to say to her I will say, and what I have sworn to do I will
do, come what will.'
Then came the puzzling question, how was I to greet her when we met?
Was I to run up and kiss her, and hear her say, 'Oh, I'm so pleased!'
as she would sometimes say when I kissed her of yore? No: her
deportment in the morning forbade _that_.
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