noon
From this position a portion of the sky and the woods was reflected in the pool , which , from its bank , was but a mass of darkness . The first time she reclined in this manner , her heart beat audibly ; in time she lay down as calmly as on the mountain heather ; the perception of the sublime was probably heightened by an intermingled sense of danger ; and perhaps that indifference to life , which early disappointment forces upon sensitive minds , was necessary to the first experiment . There was , in the novelty and strangeness of the position , an excitement which never wholly passed away , but which became gradually subordinate to the influence , at once tranquillising and elevating , of the mingled eternity of motion , sound , and solitude . One sultry noon , she descended into this retreat with a mind more than usually disturbed by reflections on the past . She lay in her favourite position , sometimes gazing on the cataract ; looking sometimes up the steep sylvan acclivities , into the narrow space of the cloudless ether ; sometimes down into the abyss of the pool , and the deep bright-blue reflections that opened another immensity below her . The distressing recollections of the morning , the world and all its littlenesses , faded from her thoughts like a dream ; but her wounded and wearied spirit drank in too deeply the tranquillising power of the place , and she dropped asleep upon the tree like a ship-boy on the mast . At this moment Mr. Chainmail emerged into daylight , on a projection of the opposite rock , having struck down through the woods in search of unsophisticated scenery .