e East turned to rosy
ribbons. Then the dawn twilight came and the night shapes slunk away.
The Tartars and Greeks took down their shutters in the little village
hard by.

The sea became green, the rocks all grey, and then, as I watched, the
rim of the sun rose over the horizon and the sea held it as a scimitar
of fire. The white disc rose, a miracle; it looked very large, as if
it had grown bigger in the night. It paused a moment in the sea and
then suddenly seemed to bound up from it: it flooded the world with
light. Then, as if from his hands angels were leaping, thousands of
gulls were descried on the sea, their gleaming wings seeming to be the
very meaning of morning. Out of the sea under the dawn, dark dolphins
came leaping toward the shore. The sea became a grey expanse over
which the sun made a silver roadway. There commenced the quiet, quiet
morning, and the still-creation-day.

Now the day is ending, and the sun goes down behind the hills at
Yalta, the mist bank over the southern horizon catches the reflection
of true sunset tints, and transmits them to the velvety water, full of
light-rings. I have been sitting on a pleasure seat on the sand all
the afternoon, and now I go to the end of the long pier. There one may
see another vision of the mystery of the day, for the sea-waves are
full of living autumn colours, of luminous withered leaves and faded
rose petals; they are still living velvet, the night garment of a
queen. Black ducks are swimming mysteriously on the glowing dusky
water.

In a moment, however, the scene has changed and the colours have been
withdrawn. The presence in the world, the queen whom we call Day, has
passed over the waves and disappeared; not even a fold of the long
train of her dress is visible.

Some one has lighted a Roman candle at the far end of the pier, as
a signal to a steamer whose white and red lanterns have just been
descried upon the dark horizon. It is night: the day is over.

VIII

SUNSET FROM THE GATE OF BAIDARI

It was at the Gate of Baidari in the Crimea on the shortest day of
the year that I saw the most wonderful sunset I have ever known, and
entered most completely into the spirit of the dark, quiet night.

It was another vision of the sea, a presentment of the sea's question
in a new light.

A mild December afternoon. I had been some days wandering across
pleasant tree-brown valleys and immense hollows mountain-walled. In
the winter silence the