sound save the soft fitful rush of the rising tide. But behind the long
sandhill, for all they could see of the sea, they might have been in the
heart of a continent.

"Who would imagine the ocean so near us, my lady?" said Malcolm after they
had walked for some time without word spoken.

"Who can tell what may be near us?" she returned.

"True, my lady. Our future is near us, holding thousands of things
unknown. Hosts of thinking beings with endless myriads of thoughts may be
around us. What a joy to know that, of all things and all thoughts, God is
nearest to us--so near that we cannot see Him, but, far beyond seeing Him,
can know of Him infinitely!"

As he spoke they came opposite the tunnel, but he turned from it and they
ascended the dune. As their heads rose over the top, and the sky-night
above and the sea-night beneath rolled themselves out and rushed silently
together, Malcolm said, as if thinking aloud, "Thus shall we meet death
and the unknown, and the new that breaks from the bosom of the invisible
will be better than the old upon which the gates close behind us. The Son
of man is content with my future, and I am content."

There was a peace in the words that troubled Clementina: he wanted no more
than he had, this cold, imperturbable devout fisherman. She did not see
that it was the confidence of having all things that held his peace
rooted. From the platform of the swivel they looked abroad over the sea.
Far north in the east lurked a suspicion of dawn, which seemed, while they
gazed upon it, to "languish into life," and the sea was a shade less dark
than when they turned from it to go behind the dune. They descended a few
paces and halted again.

"Did your ladyship ever see the sun rise?" asked Malcolm.

"Never in open country," she answered.

"Then stay and see it now, my lady. He'll rise just over yonder, a little
nearer this way than that light from under his eyelids. A more glorious
chance you could not have. And when he rises, just observe, one minute
after he is up, how like a dream all you have been in to-night will look.
It is to me strange, even to awfulness, how many different phases of
things, and feelings about them, and moods of life and consciousness, God
can tie up in the bundle of one world, with one human soul to carry it."

Clementina slowly sank on the sand of the slope, and like lovely sphinx of
northern desert gazed in immovable silence out on the yet more northern
sea. Malco