Ducdame (edition 2009)

Some of the most significant encounters in the world occur between two persons one of whom is asleep or dead; and it might almost seem as if Rook Ashover had recognized this fact when he found himself standing by Netta Page's side on the night of November's fullest moon.

But his love, like a spear driven into the bed of a swollen river, stood up erect and defiant, visible through the driving mist to all such as might come that way, a signpost in the night, a signal, a token, a witness that would at least outlast his own days, even though it did not outlast the Scotch firs on Heron's Ridge or the linden tree and the cedar tree on the lawn of Ashover House.