ue, what secrets of the deep you could tell!" he
could not help saying aloud.

And then, as he stood listening, his wish seemed to be answered. The
face before him seemed to glow with a light as of life in the mystic
gloom that wrapped it. And it spoke to him through the silence with a
voice that was as a golden bell sounding from the heart of the
universe. It spoke a language that his being comprehended; it sang to
him a song of peace and sweetness and wonders. And he knew that the
melody that beat through it was but a murmur of the great essence
calling to him; the essence that was fragrance, that was light, that
was music; the essence that sometimes showed through the grossness of
things and that he himself had striven to capture as it flashed here
and there for those in whom burned an intenser spark of itself than
was allotted to the generality of men--for the bard, the painter, the
seer--towards whom it leapt as flame leaps to flame, yet who saw it
but as the seekers of visions see an elusive gleam flash and half die
within the blur of a magic crystal.

Here, then, was the spot!

CHAPTER VI.

He proceeded to disrobe himself, for he wished to feel the embrace of
the waters on his bare flesh. But he was not so absorbed in his self
and his purpose as to extrude all thoughts of those who were dear to
him. Nay, such thoughts, perhaps, were part of his very self. Eyes
that till now were dry became blinded with tears, so that the shaded,
floating night-world seemed to palpitate before him in a strange blur
that was like a despairing mood externalised. It were best so, he
reassured himself again; better that he should now plunge into the
sweet mystery, of which the little he knew was by a dim, exquisite
divination, better that he should live only as a sad memory than as an
evil-causing reality.

Then, too, it occurred to him, it was right that his clothes should be
left on shore. He would put them out of the reach of the tide, and the
weight of a boulder should defy the wind. The letters of his father
and Helen would serve to identify the owner of the clothes; he would
not destroy them, since there was nothing in them save what the
writers might be proud of having written. They would then know the
worst at once, instead of having to endure the long-drawn, vain hope
that is worse than despair. Even if his body were not washed ashore
there could be no mistaking his fate.

He picked his way to the water's edge