She preferred to lean upon the low grey wall in whose crannies grew lichens, tiny ferns, and, in their season, harebells and wallflowers.

Morris came and leant at her side; for a while they both stared at the sea.
"Pray, are you making up poetry ?" she inquired at last.
"Why do you ask such silly questions ?" he answered, not without indignation.
"Because you keep muttering to yourself, and I thought that you were trying to get the lines to scan.

Also the sea, and the sky, and the night suggest poetry, don't they ?" Morris turned his head and looked at her.
"_You_ suggest it," he said, with desperate earnestness, "in all that shining white, especially when the moon goes in.

Then you look like a beautiful spirit new lit upon the edge of the world." At first Mary was pleased, the compliment was obvious, and, coming from Morris, great.

She had never heard him say so much as that before.