I was taking into my heart the loveliness of the spring day.
By twelve o'clock I knew my dinner would be ready, and I had been out in the fresh air long enough to be quite ready for it.

Old Mrs.Tardif would be looking out for me impatiently, that she might get the meal over, and the things cleared away, and order restored in her dwelling.
So I quitted my warm nook with a feeling of regret, though I knew I could return to it in an hour.
But one can never return to any thing that is once left.

When we look for it again, even though the place may remain, something has vanished from it which can never come back.

I never returned to my spring-day upon the cliffs of Sark.
A little crumbling path led round the rock and along the edge of the ravine.

I chose it because from it I could see all the fantastic shore, bending in a semicircle toward the isle of Breckhou, with tiny, untrodden bays, covered at this hour with only glittering ripples, and with all the soft and tender shadows of the headlands falling across them.