The Sound in the Shell, page 9

The whole small burrow in a few lines, and Pip very small at the salvaged table writing on one leaf by the pale light of the open doorway, settled.

The sea only lends, he wrote, in his careful hand. She found the once that gives. I do not know how she asked, or where, or what it heard. The still water that held me had to come from somewhere. It came from here. She knew. I had said everything, obviously. A joke is still an answer.

The Sound in the Shell, page 9 of 12