hat round the cove and out to sea, like one
bewildered, who has expected to find something which is not there, and
begins to look for it in the most unlikely places. Hesitating,
disappointed, uncertain, he moved a little on in one direction, a
little back in the other, then, drawn by a sudden impulse, that most
familiar manifestation of the ruling force which disposes of us all,
we know not how, he walked up the cove with swift, strong, buoyant
steps, as if with a purpose, swinging his hat in his hand as he came,
and threw himself full length on the smooth, hard, shining sand, and
sighed a deep sigh of satisfaction, as though he knew himself within
reach of what he sought. In certain states of ecstatic feeling a
faculty is released which takes cognisance of things beyond the ken of
our beclouded intellects, and although in the language of mind he did
not know, it may be that from the region of pure spirit there had come
to him a subtle perception, not to be defined, which made it more
desirable to be there on that spot alone than anywhere else in the
world with no matter whom.

He was a young man of seventeen or eighteen, slenderly built, with
well-shaped feet, and long, delicate, nervous hands. His face was
shaved clean of the down of his adolescence, so that his somewhat
sallow complexion looked smooth to effeminacy. His features were
regular and refined, and his fine brown curly hair was a shade lighter
in colour than his skin--which produced a noticeable effect. His pale
china-blue eyes, too, showed the same peculiarity, which Beth, looking
down on him through the fringe of long rank grass in front of her,
remarked, but uncritically, for every inch of him was a joy to her.

She was passive. But the young man soon grew restless on his sandy
couch. He changed his position a dozen times, then suddenly got on his
knees, and heaped up a mound of sand, which, having patted it and
pressed it down as hard as it would set, he began to model. Beth held
her breath and became rigid with interest as she saw the shapeless
mass gradually transformed into some semblance of a human figure,
conventional as an Egyptian statue. When the young man had finished,
he sat beside the figure for some time, looking fixedly out to sea.
Then he turned to his work once more, and, after surveying it
critically, he began to make alterations, trying to improve upon what
he had done; but the result did not please him, and in a fit of
exasperation h