Выбрать главу

Bound tightly together, both by the girl’s clinging arms and by the cord she had fastened round them, the North Sea as it drew back in the outflowing of its tide, carried their bodies forth into the darkness.

Far from land it carried them — under the misty unseeing sky — far from misery and madness, and when the dawn came trembling at last over the restless expanse of water, it found only the white sea-horses and the white sea-birds. Those two had sunk together; out of reach of humanity, out of reach of Rodmoor.

THE END

About the Author

John Cowper Powys (1872–1963) was born in Derbyshire, brought up in the West Country (the Somerset — Dorset border area was to have a lasting influence on him), went to Cambridge University and then became a teacher and lecturer mainly in the USA where he lived for about thirty years. On returning to the UK, after a short spell in Dorset, he settled in Wales in 1935 where he lived for the rest of his long life. In addition to his Autobiography his masterpieces are considered to be Wolf Solent, Glastonbury Romance, Weymouth Sands and Porius. But his lesser, or less well-known, works shouldn’t be overlooked, they spring from the same weird, mystical, brilliant and obsessive imagination.