The nearest mountain, a huge hazy turquoise-green thing, conical, terrible, is so near I can see the thickly-forested ridges and the blue precipices and the grey chasms. The mountain behind that, and separated from it by the sea, is less evenly shaped and on clear days looks as though it’s going to lurch forward. It is fascinating but ominous. The third mountain, between and beyond them, is so distant that even on clear days I can’t make out more than a vague pattern of changing shades, valleys and slopes, floating in the insubstantial horizon.

And beyond the horizon lie the Northern lands, where the terror-legends come from. My own nurses used to scare and horrify me with tales of how I would be given to the cruel barbarous animal-people there, if I were not good. The people there are animals, they are not descended from the gods as we are. There is no kindness, no mercy, pity or gentleness possible to their natures. They are avaricious and savage; at best they are callous, at their worst they are sadistic and no atrocity is beyond giving them pleasure. Physically they are brutish, graceless. So it is exciting to look out over the sea and mountains and know that they enclose me from the Northern lands, secure, safe in the benediction of our ancestors the gods, in our own prosperity and beauty.

And the sea is nearer to see from this window than any other in the tower. It would be gorgeous to watch it during storms except that then it is mostly hidden from me by the huge swift continuous sweeps of rain.

The tumbled stones lying round the ruined window-way were of a great heat when I first ventured to touch them.

One rocked, hesitated, plunged and fell into the abyss.

I leaned over as far as I dared and watched its awful drop. It left an unfamiliar space on the sill. That really was a day on which there was a happening. I was shaking all the time but I got up slowly, steadied myself, climbed on to the broad sill,

and walked over the unsteady tumbled ancient stones on it until I had nearly come to the edge. I lowered myself with slow, slow care to stooping and then looked down for the first time on what is below.

It was wonderful; I felt like a poet and an explorer in one daring creamy skin.

I was so enthralled I almost forgot how dangerous my position was on the edge of the sill.

The first time was wonderful and the others have really been just as wonderful but also more conscious of the danger. There is a small round plateau down there. It is grassy in its centre and rocky round the edges and a little thin blue thing shone through it. And from my reading, I knew at once that I must be beholding a stream.