with it some of the spirit of joy which had fled, but she was carrying a
little bag, which she snatched away; there came from it a crackle as of
a letter.... They went down on to the cliff together and stood awhile in
a speechless constraint among the withered bracken.

It was a day of sunlight so faint it seemed dead, like some gleam
refracted onto the pale bright sky, and so to earth, rather than any
direct outflow; the quiet air was only stirred by the swish of scythes
from the sloping cliff where two men cut the crisp bracken down for
litter for cattle. The time of year had fallen upon rust--brown-rust
were the bells of the dried heath, the spires of wall-pennywort that
lurked in the crannies of the boulders; blood-rust were the wisps of
dead sorrel that stood up into the sunlight; fawn-rust were the hemlocks
with their spidery umbels, and a deader fawn were the masses of seeded
hemp-agrimony, whose once plumy heads were now become mere frothy tufts
of down, that blew against Blanche's dress as she passed, and clung
there.

Swish-swish ... came the even sweep of the scythes, a whispering sound
that irritated Blanche and somehow disarranged her carefully-prepared
sentences before ever they had a chance to reach her tongue. She felt
that here, on the rust-red cliff, with that deadly scything sounding in
their ears, Ishmael would get the better of her, and she turned through
the bracken to where an overgrown track led to what had once been a
series of tiny gardens set on the cliff and walled in with thick elder.
There at least they could be hidden from the eyes of any stray
labourers, and with less space about her she felt she would find her
task easier. Ishmael followed her with a heart that warned him of dread
to come. Always afterwards he avoided those dead gardens on the cliff
that he had been wont to like to wander in.