Still she sits, perched upon that lonely rock, cast adrift upon a sandy beach beneath a star-capped sky. Her new neighbor is standing there before her, a supplicant at the throne.
And then he asks her, as if it were a simple test, one she might easily pass and never fail: "Tell me, my dear, do you think it possible a man may ever understand a woman's mind?"Leoda looks a him, for only a moment, the feelings in her heart a mystery, even to herself. And then she is down from that -- that stone. She is running away across the beach, the young stranger calling after her, "Come back, come back, I won't hurt you..."
But she does not stop running. She runs and runs and runs and runs and does not stop running until she is finally safe at home, resting safely in the comfort of her own little bed.
But even here she cannot put her mind to rest. For, no matter how hard she tries to keep them separate and distinct, the face and figure of her beloved, dead mother and that of the young stranger she had once thought so glorious would shift and merge and melt together in her mind, indistinguishable, until she could not, at last, tell one -- from the other.