ing, very bravely dressed, rustling forward with a silken sound and much silken shining to meet him. The battleships had gone; the sea was blue with a panier of diamonds; the sky was full with a misty tenderness like love. Siegmund had never recognized before the affection that existed between him and everything. We do not realize how tremendously dear and indispensable to us are the hosts of common things, till we must leave them, and we break our hearts.
“We have been very happy together,” everything seemed to say.
Siegmund looked up into the eyes of the morning with a laugh.
“It is very lovely,” he said, “whatever happens.”
So he went down to the beach; his dark blue eyes, darker from last night’s experience, smiled always with the pride of love. He undressed by his usual altar-stone.
“How closely familiar everything is,” he thought. “It seems almost as if the curves of this stone were rounded to fit in my soul.”
He touched the smooth white slope of the stone gently with discovering fingers, in the same way as he touched the cheek of Helena, or of his own babies. He found great pleasure in this feeling of intimacy with things. A very soft wind, shy as a girl, put its arms round him, and seemed to lay its cheek against his chest. He placed his hands beneath his arms, where the wind was caressing him, and his eyes opened with wondering pleasure.
“They find no fault with me,” he said. “I suppose they are as fallible as I, and so don’t judge,” he added,
