Then she turned inward to the eyot, which had done her nought but good, and which she loved; and she unbound her hair, and let it fall till the ends of the tresses mingled with the heads of the meadow-sweet, and thereafter walked quietly up into the grassy middle of the isle. She was wont to go to a knoll there where the grass was fine, and flowery at this time with white clover and dog violet, and lie down under the shade of a big thorn with a much-twisted bole: but to-day some thought came across her, and she turned before she came to the thorn, and went straight over the eyot (which was but a furlong over at that place) and down to the southward-looking shore thereof. There she let herself softly down into the water and thrust off without more ado, and swam on and on till she had gone a long way. Then she communed with herself, and found that she was thinking: If I might only swim all the water and be free. And still she swam on: and now a light wind had been drawn up from the west, and was driving a little ripple athwart the lake, and she swam the swiftlier for it awhile, but then turned over on her back and floated southward still. Till on a sudden, as she lay looking up toward the far-away blue sky, and she so little and low on the face of the waters, and the lake so deep beneath her, and the wind coming ever fresher from the west, and the ripple rising higher against her, a terror fell upon her, and she longed for the green earth and its well-wrought little blossoms and leaves and grass; then she turned over again and swam straight for the eyot, which now was but a little green heap far away before her. Long she was ere she made land there, and the sun was high in the heavens when she came, all spent and weary, to the shadow of the hawthorn-tree; and she cast herself down there and fell asleep straightway. Forsooth her swim was about as much as she had might for. When she awoke it lacked but an hour of noon-tide, and she felt the life in her and was happy, but had no will to rise up for a while; for it was ajoy to her to turn her head this way and that to the dear and dainty flowers, that made the wide, grey, empty lake seem so far away, and no more to be dealt with than the very sky itself.