we know it, nor anything evil, as we
know it, in the eye of the Omnipresent and the
Omniscient.--_Oriental Proverb._

I

THE STRAND OF DREAMS

"I must see him if only for a minute. I can't go back to the city after
coming so far. Please--" but the girl's face disappeared and the rickety
door, which had been opened on a chain, was slammed after this
imperative speech, and Gerald Shannon found himself staring
exasperatedly at its rusty exterior. To have travelled on foot such a
distance only to be turned away like a beggar enraged him. Nor was the
prospect of returning over the path which had brought him to Karospina's
house a cheering one. He turned and saw that a low, creeping mist had
obliterated every vestige of the trail across the swamp lands. There was
no sun, and the twilight of a slow yellow day in late September would
soon, in complicity with the fog, leave him totally adrift on this
remote strand--he could hear the curving fall and hiss of the breakers,
the monotonous rumour of the sea. So he was determined to face
Karospina, even if he had to force his way into the house.

Two hours earlier, at the little railway station, they had informed him
that the road was easy flatland for the greater part of the way. He had
offered money for a horse or even a wheel; but these were luxuries on
this bleak, poverty-ridden coast. As there was no alternative, Gerald
had walked rapidly since three o'clock. And he had not been told the
truth about the road; where the oozing, green, unwholesome waters were
not he stepped, sometimes sinking over his ankles in the soft mud. Not a
sign of humanity served him for comfort or compass. He had been assured
that if he kept his back to the sun he would reach his destination. And
he did, but not without many misgivings. It was the vision of a squat
tower-like building, almost hemmed in by a monster gas reservoir,
fantastic wooden galleries, and the gigantic silhouettes of strange
machinery, that relieved his mind. But this house and its surroundings
soon repelled him. His reception was the final disenchantment.

He played a lively tattoo with his blackthorn stick on the panels of the
door. For five minutes this continued, interspersed with occasional loud
calls for Karospina. At last the siege was raised. After preliminary
unboltings, unbarrings, and the rattling of the chain, Gerald saw before
him a middle-aged man with a smooth face and closely shaven head, who
quietly