What could be better than to slip into it and slowly let it close above her poor aching head?
She would go out and look at the water; in that, at any rate, there could be no harm.
She wrapped herself in a long cloak and drew its hood over her head.
Then she slipped from the house and stole like a ghost through the darkling streets and out of the Maren or Sea Poort, where the guard let her pass thinking that she was a country woman returning to her village.
Now the moon was rising, and by the light of it Lysbeth recognised the place.

Here was the spot where she had stood on the day of the ice carnival, when that woman who was called Martha the Mare, and who said that she had known her father, had spoken to her.

On that water she had galloped in Montalvo's sledge, and up yonder canal the race was run.
She followed along its banks, remembering the reedy mere some miles away spotted with islets that were only visited from time to time by fishermen and wild-fowlers; the great Haarlemer Meer which covered many thousands of acres of ground.

That mere she felt must look very cool and beautiful on such a night as this, and the wind would whisper sweetly among the tall bulrushes which fringed its banks.
On Lysbeth went and on; it was a long, long walk, but at last she came there, and, oh! the place was sweet and vast and lonely.

For so far as her eye could reach in the light of the low moon there was nothing but glimmering water broken here and there by the reed-wreathed islands.
Hark! how the frogs croaked and the bitterns boomed among the rushes.
Look where the wild ducks swam leaving behind them broad trails of silver as their breasts broke the surface of the great mere into rippling lines.
There, on an island, not a bowshot from her, grew tufts of a daisy-like marsh bloom, white flowers such as she remembered gathering when she was a child.