Silver-bright the woods and fell-side, on the west; while on the east the woods in shadow, lay sleeping, 'moon-charmed.' The air was balmy; and one seemed to hear through it the steady soft beat of the summer life, rising through the leaves and grass and flowers.

Every sound was enchantment--the drip of water from the oars, the hooting of an owl on the island, even the occasional distant voices, and tapping of horses' feet on the main road bordering the lake.
Sarratt let the oars drift, and the boat glided, as though of its own will, past the island, and into the shadow beyond it.

Now it was Silver How, and all the Grasmere mountains, that caught the 'hallowing' light.
Nelly sat bare-headed, her elbows on her knees, and her face propped in her hands.

She was in white, with a white shawl round her, and the grace of the slight form and dark head stirred anew in Sarratt that astonished and exquisite sense of possession which had been one of the main elements of consciousness, during their honeymoon.

Of late indeed it had been increasingly met and wrestled with by something harsher and sterner; by the instinct of the soldier, of the fighting man, foreseeing a danger to his own will, a weakening of the fibre on which his effort and his power depend.