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beach on a fine night, stirring a puddle, looking
at a stone, asking themselves "What am I,"
"What is this?" had suddenly an answer vouch-
safed them: ("We are in the hands of the Lord")(they
could not
say what
it was)
so that they were warm in the frost and had
comfort in the desert. But Mrs. McNab continued
to drink and gossip as before.

6


    The spring without a leaf to toss, bare and
bright like a virgin fierce in her chastity, scornful
in her purity, was laid out on fields wide-eyed and
watchful and entirely careless of what was done or
thought by the beholders. [ ((Prue Ramsay, leaning
on her father's arm, was given in marriage. What,
people said, could have been more fitting? And,
they added, how beautiful she looked!)]
    As summer neared, as the evenings lengthened,
there came to the wakeful, the hopeful, walking
the beach, stirring the pool, imaginations of the
strangest kind -- of flesh turned to atoms which
drove before the wind, of stars flashing in their hearts,
of cliff, sea, cloud, and sky brought purposely to-
gether to assemble outwardly the scattered parts
of the vision within. In those mirrors, the minds
of men, in those pools of uneasy water, in which
clouds for ever turn and shadows form, dreams

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