They were radiance and light to the world, haunted with phantoms of pain and unrest, in which she had her being.

There, hidden among those cryptic singing lines, was the clue.

If she could only grasp it, all would be made clear.

Of this she was sublimely confident.

She would understand Sarah's sharp tongue, her unhappy brother, the cruelty of Charley Long, the justness of the bookkeeper's beating, the day-long, month-long, year-long toil at the ironing-board.
She skipped a stanza that she knew was hopelessly beyond her, and tried again: "The dusk of the greenhouse is luminous yet With quivers of opal and tremors of gold; For the sun is at rest, and the light from the west, Like delicate wine that is mellow and old, "Flushes faintly the brow of a naiad that stands In the spray of a fountain, whose seed-amethysts Tremble lightly a moment on bosom and hands, Then dip in their basin from bosom and wrists." "It's beautiful, just beautiful," she sighed.