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(2)gravely treasured up and engulphed in the folds of theircloaks, in their compassionate hearts, what was murmured andcried, accepted and understood those changes from torture tocalm, from hate to indifference, which came and went and cameagain upon the sleepers' faces. It seemed, at least, as ifeach reached out and found standing at the foot of his bed thecounterpart of his thoughts, the sharer of his deeds, found insleep a completeness denied him by day, and to that cried and tothat confided and laughed the senseless wild laughter which, hadthe waking heard it, would have startled them. To each asharer, to each thought an answer, and in this knowledge content -it might be so. It might be that dreaming and sleeping eachput off the cumber and trouble of flesh and left the house andpaced the beach and asked of the wave and the sky: is the sharp-edged furniture all, and the flower; is the day all; is ourduty to the day?

The waves breaking seemed like night shaking her head backand letting despairingly her dark down, and musing and mourningas if she lamented the doom which drowned the earth and extin-guished its lights and of all ships and towns left nothing.The wave sweeps up the beach; the night mourns human sorrow;the sea's beauty consoles; so the wind may have answered thesleepers, the dreamers, pacing the sand and asking, Why wrap usabout in the dsea's beauty, why console us with the lamentationof the breaking waves, if in truth we only spin this clothing