know.

"Well," she said, "I didn't beat you."

"Form not good enough yet--quite."

He promised her it should be perfect by the time Mark came home.


VIII.

"The pale pearl-purple evening--" The words rushed together. She couldn't
tell whether they were her own or somebody else's.

There was the queer shock of recognition that came with your own real
things. It wasn't remembering though it felt like it.

Shelley--"The pale purple even." Not pearl-purple. Pearl-purple was what
you saw. The sky to the east after sunset above Greffington Edge. Take
out "pale," and "pearl-purple evening" was your own.

The poem was coming by bits at a time. She could feel the rest throbbing
behind it, an unreleased, impatient energy.

Her mother looked in at the door. "What are you doing it for, Mary?"

"Oh--for nothing."

"Then for pity's sake come down into the warm room and do it there.
You'll catch cold."