Notice the tone of the image. Satire, for sure - a despairing maiden makes a desperate attempt to return to the country of her conception. She has been ravaged, mocked and tormented. But will she arrive back on the beloved beach of her childhood only to find she is an orphan? Perhaps she no longer belongs at home. One thinks of Isabel in Melville's Pierre. The question hangs over the allegory as a thick-set, towering cloud - but it is shot through with a divine, blinding sunshine. Infinity - the ideal that expresses both hope and despair. When I was at school, I knew a boy who could put a Maltheser in each nostril and fire them at will any time in the following hour. He could even make them stick to the ceiling.