Idle for a moment, he let his craft drift out from the reeds. Even the Lake itself, he reflected, some current in it, was bearing him away towards the river, towards the hidden Dragon Gorge. He dipped a blade, and paddled slowly across the water, past islets of reed and bamboo that stood out of the mist, looking for some place where a lane in the mist might give him a glimpse of the Valley. Once, indeed, there was a rift, a view of what seemed some part of the Rock. He was like a man seeking in his memory for something familiar and forgotten. Silently over the water came Lychnis in her white dress, paddling alone, looking steadfastly in front of her. Their boats rasped. “I am sorry,” he said quietly. “I did not mean to intercept you.” “It seems to be fated that our paths in life should drift together.” She spoke very coldly, and he admitted to himself that something was gone from their relationship. He cleared his mind—opened it to the possible implications of that change. They came to him. “The mist is lifting,” he said, and they both looked back over the islet-studded water. The distant Rock, the shore of the Lake with their own mooring-raft of bamboo, a deep grey blur, came into sight like a dream remembered at morning when sleep cannot be regained. She turned her head steadily away, and the mists closed again, blotting out lake and islet and crag. A voice came from her. “One had pleasant days there.” The blade of her paddle hung, and the voice came from her again: “It is not the same, only remembering.” She sped her canoe, and he watched her become a blot of white and pale brown, vanishing in grey vapour. 47 Under the leadership, once more, of Such-a-one, the homeward journey began. Sprot had been released from imprisonment on the mountain of meditation. The mists lifted soon after they had entered the Gorge of Dragons; the autumn sunshine was warm; violets were to be seen where lawn or grove came down to the water’s edge, and a memory of early summer lingered among the sombre brown shadows under and about the cliffs. Lychnis would not let them camp in the creek where they had spent a night when they were journeying the other way. The violets were ghosts, and the autumn song of birds was an echo, for it seems that her firmness of heart had left her when they entered the Gorge. So they went swiftly on, helped by the seaward current. Lord Sombrewater watched Lychnis with anxiety, and Quentin lay in wait, hoping to catch some advantage out of her reaction. But she shunned everyone, and was a fiend to Ruby, who lay in her boat. Late at night they came to the mouth of the Gorge and pitched their tents (but not where they had pitched them before) and slept. Ambrose, however, preferred to keep watch for any portent that might appear, and at dawn, when he was fishing among the reeds at the deep-flowing mouth of the Gorge, Lychnis came to him, sweet with the morning, flushed with despair.