TIME PASSESshape clearly there seemed to drop into thissilence [∧],this indifference, this integrity, the thud ofsomething falling.([A shell exploded. Twenty or thirty youngmen were blown up in France, among themAndrew Ramsay, whose death, mercifully, wasinstantaneous.)]At that season those who had gone down topace the beach and ask of the sea and sky whatmessage they reported or what vision theyaffirmed had to consider among the usual tokensof divine bounty—the sunset on the sea, the pallorof dawn, the moon rising, fishing-boats against themoon, and children making mud pies or peltingeach other with handfuls of grass, something outof harmony with this jocundity,[%]and this serenity.There was the silent apparition of an ashen-coloured ship for instance, come, gone; there wasa purplish stain upon the bland surface of the seaas if something had boiled and bled, invisibly,beneath. This intrusion into a scene calculatedto stir the most sublime reflections and lead to themost comfortable conclusions stayed their pacing.It was difficult blandly to overlook them, ;toabolish their significance in the landscape; tocontinue, as one walked by the sea, to marvel howbeauty outside mirrored beauty within.Did Nature supplement what man advanced?207