I sat by my window and watched the low clouds reel and stagger past. It seemed as if everything were being swept along—I myself seemed to have lost my substance, to have become detached from concrete things and the firm trodden pavement of everyday life. Onward, always onward, not knowing where, nor why, the wind, the clouds, the rain and the birds and the leaves, everything whirling along—why? All this time the old crow sat motionless, though the clouds tumbled, and were rent and piled, though the trees bent, and the window-pane shivered with running water. Then I found it had ceased to rain; that there was a sickly yellow gleam of sunlight, brightening on some great elm-leaves near at hand till they looked like ripe lemons hanging. The crow looked at me—I was certain he looked at me. “What do you think of it all?” I asked him. He eyed me with contempt: great featherless, half winged bird as I was, incomprehensible, contemptible, but awful. I believe he hated me. “But,” said I, “if a raven could answer, why won’t you?” He looked wearily away. Nevertheless my gaze disquieted him. He turned uneasily; he rose, waved his wings as if for flight, poised, then settled defiantly down again. “You are no good,” said I, “you won’t help even with a word.” He sat stolidly unconcerned. Then I heard the lapwings in the meadow crying, crying. They seemed to seek the storm, yet to rail at it. They wheeled in the wind, yet never ceased to complain of it. They enjoyed the struggle, and lamented it in wild lament, through which came a sound of exultation. All the lapwings cried, cried the same tale, “Bitter, bitter, the struggle—for nothing, nothing, nothing,”—and all the time they swung about on their broad wings, revelling. “There,” said I to the crow, “they try it, and find it bitter, but they wouldn’t like to miss it, to sit still like you, you old corpse.” He could not endure this. He rose in defiance, flapped his wings, and launched off, uttering one “Caw” of sinister foreboding. He was soon whirled away. I discovered that I was very cold, so I went downstairs. Twisting a curl round his finger, one of those loose curls that always dance free from the captured hair, Leslie said: “Look how fond your hair is of me; look how it twines round my finger. Do you know, your hair—the light in it is like—oh—buttercups in the sun.” “It is like me—it won’t be kept in bounds,” she replied. “Shame if it were—like this, it brushes my face—so—and sets me tingling like music.” “Behave! Now be still, and I’ll tell you what sort of music you make.” “Oh—well—tell me.” “Like the calling of throstles and blackies, in the evening, frightening the pale little wood-anemones, till they run panting and swaying right up to our wall. Like the ringing of bluebells when the bees are at them; like Hippomenes, out-of-breath, laughing because he’d won.” He kissed her with rapturous admiration. “Marriage music, sir,” she added.