- It's epigraph time again, Shmoopers.
- This one comes to us from one of Randolph Henry Ash's Ask to Embla poems. In it, the poet compares his lover's "changefulness" to the water cycle and uses images of waterfalls and pools to describe her forcefulness and form.
- What echoes of this water imagery will we find in the chapter to come? Read on to find out.
- This chapter opens with another of Randolph Henry Ash's letters to his wife, Ellen Ash. In it, he continues to describe his travels in North Yorkshire, and he focuses on the rivers, brooks, streams, and waterfalls that he's been exploring.
- When our trusty narrator returns us to Roland Mitchell and Maud Bailey, we see them on the second day of their trip. Both of them now feel absolutely sure that Christabel LaMotte traveled to North Yorkshire with Randolph Henry Ash, but they still don't have any hard proof.
- Maud and Roland head towards the Thomason Foss, which Randolph Henry Ash knew as the Thomasine Foss.
- As Roland looks out over the waterfall and the pool into which it falls, he notices that when the light hits the water a certain way, its reflection on the "naturally cavernous circle of rocks and lowering brows" that surround the pool makes it seem as though the boulders are on fire (14.14).
- When Roland points this out to Maud, she realizes that Christabel LaMotte must have seen this very same phenomenon, and she quotes a long passage from The Fairy Melusina that describes exactly this trick of the light.
- Soon, Roland and Maud pick up the conversation they had been having the day before. As they compare Victorian perceptions of human sexuality to late twentieth-century perceptions of it, they imagine what it might have felt like for Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte to have come here together.
- In the midst of this conversation, Roland and Maud realize something intriguing about each other. Both of them share the exact same fantasy of "a clean empty bed in a clean empty room, where nothing is asked or to be asked" (14.28).
- As they eat supper together that night, they decide to visit a place called Boggle Hole the next day. Roland likes the sound of the name, and he wouldn't mind taking a break from following in Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte's footsteps.
- Roland and Maud set out together the next day and wander around the cove called Boggle Hole. It's a gorgeous place, and they eventually sit down to eat a picnic lunch on rocks overlooking the sea.
- As they eat, Roland and Maud have the most personal conversation they've had so far. Maud shares some of her concerns about Leonora's upcoming visit, and Roland describes his situation with Val. Maud tells Roland about her affair with Fergus, and then she explains why she always wears her hair tied up and hidden away.
- Roland tells Maud that she should let her hair down, and she does.